After reading Lawrence's "Why the Novel Matters", I'm left with an initial thought. Lawrence's explicit voice seems more concise and easier to understand than much of the verbose narration and dialogue in Women in Love. Although I'm generalizing because I've yet to read any more of Lawrence's nonfiction writing (or for that matter, fiction), I'm left with much admiration for his ability to so seamlessly transcend his own voice in taking the persona of the narrator and characters.
More specifically, I thought his insistence on the novel's livelihood was very intriguing. He challenges us to "learn from the novel" saying that "in the novel, the characters can do nothing but live. If they keep on being good, according to pattern, or bad, according to pattern, or even volatile, according to pattern, they cease to live, and the novel falls dead. A character in a novel has got to live, or it is nothing" (187). To begin with, I find it interesting that he advocates the novel as his primary example because by nature it is physical set in stone, with no possibility for change after being published or distributed; the information presented in the novel is permanent. That said, I understand where he is coming from. A novel remains engaging just as long as someone or something is undergoing change. He seems, however, to almost be pushing the argument that if characters have any consistency that can be recognized as a pattern, that they're not worthwhile or should not be granted the status of "novel" - because without the incalculable quality, a novel is killed and "falls dead". It could certainly be argued that the spontaneity, inconsistency, and unpredictability of Women in Love's characters reinforce his point. It does sort of seem like a hasty generalization to make (though he has much more credibility than me).
In the same way that a novel is "set in stone", so too is cinema. This is interesting, because the cinema is often considered to present the most lifelike or vivid of representations, the most faithful to the nature of change in the world. However, reading DHL, I find that same feeling of something recorded permanently that has a real quality of motion -- and not just a simple predictable motion, but a living kind of "vibration" -- that is nevertheless very unlike the cinema. Where the cinema deals with how the visual can suggest, DHL really doesn't suggest so much as propose to unfold the unarticulable variations of desires and emotions.
ReplyDeleteNicely put. One way of thinking about what DHL is doing in regards to the motion you so aptly describe is that he performs rather than describes or states.
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