Tremulation on the Ether

Versions of Instinctual Primacy in the Essays of D. H. Lawrence

Abstract

Peter Balbert reviews The Bad Side of Books: Selected Essays of D. H. Lawrence, edited and introduced by Geoff Dyer (New York Review of Books). Balbert praises Dyer’s chronological arrangement of the thirty-six essays, which lets Lawrence’s recurring preoccupations emerge organically, but rejects Dyer’s suggestion that Lawrence peaked early as a novelist. He traces through the essays Lawrence’s belief in instinctual primacy and the “fourth-dimensional” quickness of life, his sharp reviews of Hardy, Hemingway, Tolstoy, Joyce, and others, and his prescient cultural warnings, noting repeatedly how Lawrence’s ideas anticipate Norman Mailer’s.