Volume 27, Number 9 · May 29, 1980
Contradictory Lawrence
By V.S. Pritchett
The Life of D.H. Lawrence
by Keith Sagar
Pantheon, 256 pp., $17.95
The hectoring urgency in D. H. Lawrence's novels has been outstripped by what has happened to us all since his time. His short stories and poems seem to me his finest work, and his prolific letters stand out among the most lived and arresting in the English language. They reveal all his contradictions: they are instant self-portrayals, for good or ill. They spring from the same source as his need for fearless conversation, with its mixture of beguilement, vision, and insult that kept him alive as an artist and a man. There was always a quiet low laugh from him when silence closed on his exorbitance.
Review, 2805 words
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