From my Highlighter: A Twisted Man, but Smart

D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature. My version: Penguin, 1977.

In his Student’s Guide to U.S. History, Wilfred M. McClay assembled a list of 26 books and called them “An American Canon.” I was acquainted with most of them (The Federalist, Moby Dick, etc.), but four were new to me, including D.H. Lawrence’s Studies in Classic American Literature. “What,” I wondered, “does that British pornographer have to say about American literature?”

For a while now, I’ve subscribed to an important corollary of the principle of connaturality: distorted living creates distorted thinking. If a person’s life is ruled by passion, his thinking will be distorted by passion. It’s no coincidence that sexually-illicit heterosexuals are more likely to support homosexual marriage. For the sexually illicit, sex is king...or at least a queen (and maybe a bishop, if you’re Episcopalian). They don’t think clearly about sex because they’re ruled by sex. People think college professors make students into liberals. Maybe, but the students’ distorted living plays a heavy role, too.

So I didn’t think the Chatterley dude would have a whole lot to say about the United States, especially since he was from Britain.

I was wrong. His book is strong, filled with wise and novel (and funny . . . bonus) observations, like this: “But to try to know any living being is to try to suck the life out of that being. . . It is the temptation of a vampire fiend.” He says some stupid things, too, but he makes many observations about American life that rank with de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, Chesterton’s What I Saw in America, and Santayana’s Character and Opinion in the United States.

Sample:

"When America set out to destroy Kings and Lords and Masters, and the whole paraphernalia of European superiority, it pushed a pin right through its own body, and on that pin it still flaps and buzzes and twists in misery. The pin of democratic equality. Freedom.

There’ll never be any life in America till you pull the pin out and admit natural inequality. Natural superiority, natural inferiority. Till such time, Americans just buzz around like various sorts of propellers, pinned down by their freedom and equality." p. 49.

Political equality, yes. Divine equality, yes. Social, intellectual, physical equality, no.

Yet in America, all things—pursuits and interests, opinions and choices—are deemed equal and deserving of respect. The results are often grotesque (NASCAR nation comes immediately to mind or fans of the Georgia Bulldogs).

Lawrence isn’t beyond the metaphysical, even when he expresses it in the biological:

"The central law of all organic life is that each organism is intrinsically isolate and single in itself.

The moment is isolation breaks down . . . death sets in.

This is true of every individual organism, from man to amoeba.

But the secondary law of all organic life is that each organism only lives through contact with other matter, assimilation, and contact with other life, which means assimilation of new vibrations, non-material. Each individual organism is vivified by intimate contact with fellow organisms: up to a certain point." p. 71.

In order to have contact with another, we must break down a little, we must lessen our isolation. But if we break down too much, I think Lawrence is saying, we die.

Death results from termination of isolation, yes, but the termination of isolation is necessary for ultimate communion, which, it seems to me, is the logical extension of what Lawrence is saying: A breakdown of isolation is necessary for important communion with others to take place. Likewise, a complete breakdown of isolation is necessary for final communion with The Other to take place.

To be continued...