27 May 2017

A Brief Note on the Conceptual Penis Hoax

Andy Warhol: Penis (1977)   


Peter Boghossian is a professor of philosophy at Portland State University; James Lindsay, a prolific author with a Ph. D. in mathematics. Both are prominent figures on the so-called New Atheism scene.

It's surprising, therefore, that they don't have better things to do than publish a fake paper in a little known journal, making the mock-argument that the penis should not be viewed primarily as a male sex organ but as a social construct, in order to expose how gender studies is, in their view, founded upon the almost-religious belief that maleness is the root of all evil.     

Unfortunately, as Ruth Graham points out, what Boghossian and Lindsay’s limp hoax really exposed was their own obsessions and phallic anxiety; "a perusal of their writing online reveals a persistent discontent with the supposed uselessness and hypocrisy of women’s studies and gender studies departments, and feminism more broadly".

This sniggering, sneering, disrespectful and dismissive approach to disciplines outside their knowledge is shameful I think. For as Graham says, anyone who has concerns with the sometimes bonkers but more often brilliant work being carried out by theorists working within the above areas is free to critically engage with it; whilst those who are convinced that such work is completely worthless can simply look away.

There's no need to be such a massive dick about it ...


Notes 

Ruth Graham, 'Phallic Anxiety (Probably!) Drives Male Academics to Execute Lame Hoax About Gender Studies', Slate, (25 May, 2017): click here to read.

Readers interested in Boghossian and Lindsay's spoof paper - 'The conceptual penis as a social construct' - published in Cogent Social Sciences (May, 2017) under the pseudonyms Jamie Lindsay and Peter Boyle, can click here (taken down by the journal, it has nevertheless been web archived). 

Interestingly - and somewhat ironically - whilst the above paper is indeed nonsense, it's central proposition is perfectly valid and worthy of analysis; the penis isn't merely a biological organ; it has a wide range of cultural, political, and philosophical significance (particularly when conceived in terms of the phallus). 


25 May 2017

Stupid Is As Stupid Does (Notes on the Dunning-Kruger Effect)



I noticed long ago that one of the classic hallmarks or tell-tale signs of stupidity is the failure of a subject to recognise or own up to their own intellectual limitations and to arrogantly believe that they are in fact well-informed and of above average intelligence.  

But what I didn't know, until recently, is that this mix of cognitive misconception and conceit has been closely studied by psychologists and described in detail: the Dunning-Kruger effect refers precisely to the phenomenon wherein idiots cannot accurately evaluate their own capacities or knowledge and suffer from illusions of superiority due to their inability to see what is patently obvious to everyone else; i.e., that they're dimwits.   

Interestingly, the corollary to the D-K effect indicates that gifted people of high ability tend to underestimate or downplay their own competence and mistakenly presume that others can do what they do just as well and just as easily. In other words, intelligent people are often self-effacing and overly generous in their expectations.   

Of course, the fact that fools are often smug and superior in their foolishness had been observed long before Dunning and Kruger formulated their theory in 1999. Poets, philosophers, playwrights and even naturalists such as Darwin have commented on the fact that ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.  

But it's Bertrand Russell's remark that has particular resonance today for secularism in the face of religious fundamentalism: "One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision."


See: Kruger, Justin and Dunning, David; 'Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments', in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 77, No. 6, (Dec 1999), pp. 1121-1134. Click here to read.

See also Bertrand Russell; 'The Triumph of Stupidity', in the second volume of Mortals and Others: American Essays, 1931-1935 (Routledge, 1998), where he argues that the essential cause of trouble in the modern world is that "the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt." Click here to read. 

This post was suggested by Dr Andy Greenfield to whom I am grateful.


24 May 2017

Intelligent Atheists Contra Instinctive Religious Breeders



According to the latest research, religious worshippers are more instinctive but less intelligent than atheists. For whilst the faith of the former is rooted in innate, typically fixed patterns of behavioural response, the cleverness of the latter signifies an overcoming of such biological automatism and increased reliance upon the cerebral cortex and social learning.

This is not to say that atheists have a more complex neural system than believers - and it doesn't explain why they tend to be better-looking and make superior lovers - but it does suggest that they use their grey matter more.        

The theory put forward by Edward Dutton and Dimitri Van der Linden - the so-called Intelligence-Mismatch Association Model - attempts to explain why numerous studies over recent decades have consistently found a significant negative relation between intelligence and religiosity. It would make sense, say the authors, if faith is considered an evolved domain and intelligence the ability to transcend primitive instincts and to think in a rational manner that allows us to problem solve and freely develop our curiosity without falling to our knees and calling upon deities.  

However, although advantageous in many ways, evolution in no way ensures the survival of intelligence. Indeed, whereas smart individuals have successfully curtailed their fertility, peoples who still instinctively believe in a god have maintained high rates of reproduction. Thus, whilst atheists have plenty of ideas, true believers have lots of children.   

Partly, this is because the latter reject contraception on theo-superstitious grounds. But it's also because a people who still believe in a god ultimately still believe in themselves and in their right both to sacrifice and to breed. One might say they venerate their deities and express their will to power by exercising their loins, rather than their minds (and are often encouraged to do so as a religious duty).

This being the case, as a godless and childless Nietzschean one also has legitimate concerns for the future ...


See: Dutton, E. and Van der Linden, D.; 'Why is Intelligence Negatively Associated with Religiousness?', in Evolutionary Psychological Science (2017).

See also: Michael Blume; 'The Reproductive Advantage of Religiosity', a lecture given at the Explaining Religion Conference, Bristol University (2010): click here to read a published version.


23 May 2017

Towards a Queer Ethology 3: When You Feel A Little P-Pervish, P-P-P Pick Up a Penguin

 Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae)


When constructing a queer ethology concerned primarily with aberrant sexual behaviour, one has to mention the Adélie penguin. For not only are they among the most southerly distributed of all seabirds - found along the entire Antarctic coast - but they are also one of the most depraved

Just how pervy they are became quickly apparent to George Murray Levick, a scientist with the famous Scott Antarctic Expedition (1910-13). An experienced naturalist, Levick nevertheless found the sight of young male penguins engaging in auto-eroticism, fucking with other males, sexually coercing and abusing young chicks, and attempting to mate with the corpses of dead females, profoundly disturbing.

To be fair, when he'd signed on for the trip he was simply hoping to learn something about breeding habits; he wasn't expecting to witness acts of avian masturbation, homosexuality, gang-rape, and necrophilia and couldn't understand them except in anthro-moral terms (today, observers interpret them as responses by immature and inexperienced birds to false cues).

Struggling to describe what he saw, Levick recorded his original observations in Ancient Greek so that only gentleman scholars, such as himself, would be able to read them. Back in Blighty, however, he produced a short paper in English on the sexual habits of the Adélie penguin that was privately circulated amongst a select number of experts thought likely to be interested in tales of hooligan birds causing havoc in the colony via constant acts of depravity.

This paper, based on material deemed to be so shocking that Levick was asked by his publishers to remove it from his original, more comprehensive study in order to preserve public decency, was eventually lost and forgotten about for many decades.

In fact, it wasn't until 2012 when a copy was unearthed by a researcher at the Natural History Museum that the work finally entered into the public arena; a much-needed corrective to all the idealistic penguin propaganda churned out by those who find them not only cute 'n' cuddly, but virtuous ...


Note: readers interested in this material should see Douglas G. D. Russell, William J. L. Sladen and David G. Ainley; 'Dr. George Murray Levick (1876-1956): unpublished notes on the sexual habits of the Adélie penguin', in Polar Record, (Cambridge University Press, 2012). Click here to read on penguinscience.com. 

To read part one of this post - Bambi's Revenge (The Case of the Carrion Deer) - click here

To read part two - Who Fucked Bambi? (The Case of the Deer-Loving Monkey) - click here
           

22 May 2017

Towards a Queer Ethology 2: Who Fucked Bambi? (The Case of the Deer-Loving Monkey)

 Photograph: Alexandre Bonnefoy/AFP/Getty Images 

"Beasts of the earth ... they gambolled in the glade" 


Our second ethological study also involves a gentle pretty thing doing something that those who like to idealise animal behaviour and use Nature as a metaphysical reference point for their own moral values, would probably prefer not to know about; in this case, a female sika deer contentedly having sex with a male Japanese macaque (or snow monkey) on the island of Yakushima.

Such full-on fucking between two such distinct species of animal is extremely rare. In fact, this is believed to be only the second scientifically recorded example of such behaviour. For despite macaques and sika deer having a close and playful symbiotic relationship in which, in return for fruit dropped from the trees and grooming services, the deer allow the monkeys to occasionally ride on their backs, they don't usually get it on.

In a paper published in the journal Primates, scientists describe how a low-ranking, but horny young male monkey was observed repeatedly engaging in acts of coition with a couple of does. Whilst one of the deer didn't seem to particulary enjoy the attention she received from the macaque and soon ran off, the other appeared to have no objections and even licked off her lover's ejaculate from her back.  

As the lead author of the above paper writes, no ambiguity is possible here; both animals physically consented to and enjoyed the shared sexual experience.

She also suggests that mate deprivation is the most likely explanation for this non-coercive interspecies romance; a theory which argues that males who don't have access to females of their own kind are more likely to display such aberrant behaviour - though why the macaque didn't simply choose to masturbate or engage in homosexual activity with other monkeys, isn't quite clear.

Ultimately, the above case is interesting not only for what it tells us about the creatures in question, but wider issues to do with interspecies relations - including human-animal relations which, in the light of this new research, can no longer be described by opponents as completely unnatural.


Note: readers who are interested in knowing the full details of this case should see Pelé, M., Bonnefoy, A., Shimada, M. et al; 'Interspecies sexual behaviour between a male Japanese macaque and female sika deer', in Primates, Vol. 58, Issue 2 (April 2017), pp. 275-78. 

To read part one of this post - Bambi's Revenge (The Case of the Carrion Deer) - click here.  

To read part three - When You Feel a Little P-Pervish, P-P-P Pick Up a Penguin - click here.


21 May 2017

Towards a Queer Ethology 1: Bambi's Revenge (The Case of the Carrion Deer)

Mmm ... the sweet taste of ribs and revenge


Many of us having read Felix Salten's 1923 novel (first translated into English from German in 1928), or having seen Disney's animated adaptation (dir. David Hand, 1942), are familiar with the story of Bambi and his life in the woods; particularly his first terrifying encounter with Man the hunter, who later claims the life of his mother, much to the young fawn's distress.

The film, predictably, downplays the more violent and sombre, naturalistic elements of Salten's text, which was written for adults and intended not only as an ecologically concerned pro-animal tract, but also an anti-fascist political allegory (the book was subsequently banned by the Nazis and many early copies destroyed).

Thus, for example, the movie omits the scene wherein Bambi is shown by his father (and Great Prince of the Forest) a decaying human corpse, in order to demonstrate that Man too is mortal, despite his posssession of guns.   

I thought of this scene when reading a recently published report by forensic scientists of a white-tailed deer in Texas filmed scavenging human remains. Typically herbivores, deer have been known to occasionally enjoy birds' eggs, fish, and dead rabbits. But this is believed to be the first recorded incident of Bambi enjoying the sweet taste of Man and revenge.    

 
Note: readers who are interested in knowing the full details of this case should see Meckel, L. A., McDaneld, C. P. and Wescott, D. J.; 'White-tailed Deer as a Taphonomic Agent: Photographic Evidence of White-tailed Deer Gnawing on Human Bone', in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, (May, 2017).

To read part two of this post - Who Fucked Bambi? (The Case of the Deer-Loving Monkey) - click here

To read part three - When You Feel a Little P-Pervish, P-P-P Pick Up a Penguin - click here.  


19 May 2017

On the Female Nipple

School of Fontainebleau: Presumed Portrait of Gabrielle d'Estrées 
and Her Sister the Duchess of Villars (c. 1594) 
Oil on canvas (96 x 125 cm)


The female nipple is a small, anatomical structure designed primarily to secrete breast milk into the mouths of babes and sucklings. But it is also considered an erogenous zone; i.e., a part of the body highly sensitive to sexual stimulation.

It wasn't surprising, therefore, when a 2006 survey discovered that a large majority of young women said their level of arousal was significantly enhanced by having their nipples fondled, kissed, licked, sucked, bitten, or clamped. Indeed, some respondents claimed to experience orgasm directly from nipple play alone.

Female nipples are thus subject to both fetishistic fascination and rules governing modesty and so-called indecent exposure. On social media sites such as Instagram, for example, they remain taboo and subject to strict censorship, whatever the context in which they appear and regardless of whether they're erect or not.

Amusingly, a gender-equality campaign called Free the Nipple was launched in 2012, inspired by feminist filmmaker Lina Esco, to challenge this policing of and discrimination against female bodies. However, I regret to report that the latest predicted trend in cosmetic surgery is to do away with rather than liberate the poor nipple. At any rate, more and more women are apparently requesting ever smaller, Smartie-sized nipples.

For in this world today, where a shrinking number of modern women choose to breed and where, amongst those who do, there's an increasing reluctance to breastfeed, there's really no bio-functional point in having embarrassingly large or ugly-looking nipples - even if there remains a lingering, rather nostalgic, erotic justification for holding on to them for just a little while longer ...                 


Notes

To watch the official trailer to Lina Esco's film, Free the Nipple (2014), on IMDb, click here

For a related post to this one in which I develop the above ideas, click here.


17 May 2017

Spare the Wasps



Generally speaking, people don't think of wasps with the same degree of affection as they do bees, even though both can sting. It might simply be a public relations issue, but I suspect there's something more to our collective spheksophobia on the one hand and our melissophilia on the other. 

Trying to explain her fear of wasps and fondness for bees, my friend Deborah insisted the latter were kind and hardworking: "They never wilfully hurt anyone, they pollinate the flowers and they make honey - what's not to love?" 

In contrast, she said, wasps were vicious and unproductive: "They sting you for no reason and they don't do anything except make a pest of themselves whenever you're sitting outside having something to eat."  

And thus: "If you came across a bee in distress, you would instinctively want to help. But a normal person only ever wants to swat a wasp!" 

It's undoubtedly this kind of attitude that sanctifies the wanton destruction of wasp nests whenever people find them in their gardens or houses. One recalls, for example, the widely reported case from 2014 of a giant nest housing some 5000 creatures, built atop a bed in a Winchester woman's rarely used spare room, the wasps having entered through an open window and chewed through the mattress and pillows.

Even the pest controller who was called in, couldn't help but admire the amazingly beautiful nest that the insects had taken at least three months to construct. But this didn't, alas, deter him from destroying it and exterminating the entire colony with his poison spray, at the woman's request.

One also recalls the cruelty of George Orwell, who confessed to once cutting a wasp in half as it enjoyed some jam on the side of his breakfast plate; watching with gleeful fascination as a tiny stream of jam trickled out of its severed oesophagus and laughing when the insect tried to fly away and at that point realising the dreadful thing that had befallen it.

Whilst the exterminator was simply doing his job - not that this morally excuses his actions - I can't see any justification for Orwell's juvenile sadism. His intellectual point about modern man's obliviousness to having had his soul cut away, doesn't make one forget the heartless brutality that gave rise to the analogy.        

Thankfully, there are those in the world, such as Thom Bonneville, Director of the Animal Interfaith Alliance (AIA), who call upon us to spare the wasps and show care, concern and compassion for all living creatures, regardless of their size or whether they benefit us in any way.


Note: readers who wish to know more about the AIA can visit their website by clicking here.

     

15 May 2017

Pan Comes to Hampstead: Reflections on D. H. Lawrence's 'The Last Laugh'

Pan - by Thalia Took on deviantart.com


Written in 1924, 'The Last Laugh' imagines an appearance of the goat-footed Greek god Pan in Hampstead on a snowy winter's night and the tragic consequences of this. I'm not quite sure what genre it belongs to, but we might best describe it as an example of sardonic paganism; a mocking and malevolent form of queer gothic fiction directed towards a dark god who is always coming, but who never quite arrives or reveals himself.

By setting the story in a leafy north London suburb, Lawrence relates his onto-theological vision to everyday experience, whilst, at the same time, demonstrating how the latter unfolds within a wider, inhuman context that is resistant to any kind of moral-rational codification. He thereby attempts to loosen the aura of necessity surrounding categories of the present and restore a little primordial wonder to NW3.

How successful he is in achieving this, I'll leave for readers to decide; the following is essentially just a summary of the nightmarish and at times surreal tale for those who are unfamiliar with it, rather than a detailed critical analysis (although there is some degree of commentary) ...

Never one to pass up the chance to exploit cliché - if, as here, for comic rather than dramatic effect - Lawrence opens his tale at midnight, the church clock having just struck the magical hour when, for a short period, there's an opening between our electrically-luminous civilization and the world that lies outside the gate; that unexplored realm of dangerous knowledge where things go bump in the night.  

Three figures emerge from a handsome Georgian house: "A girl in a dark blue coat and fur turban, very erect: a fellow with a little dispatch-case, slouching: a thin man with a red beard, bareheaded, peering out of the gateway down the hill that swung in a curve downwards towards London."

The light covering of snow on the ground has created the impression of a new world; but it takes more than a few flakes to really change things, as we'll discover. The man with the beard, Lorenzo, says goodnight to the couple and goes back inside. Now the slouching man in a bowler hat, Mr. Marchbanks, and the erect, sharp girl who was somewhat deaf, Miss James, were all alone in the street; "save for the policeman at the corner."

She looks at her companion: with his "thick black brows sardonically arched, and his rather hooked nose" he seemed to her "like a satanic young priest" - or a "sort of faun on the Cross, with all the malice of the complication". As they walk together, past the trees and the loneliness of the Heath, toward the local Tube station, he hears somebody laughing. Turning on her Marconi made listening machine, Miss James lifts her "deaf nymph's face", but hears nothing until, that is, he suddenly "gave the weirdest, slightly neighing laugh, uncovering his strong, spaced teeth, and arching his black brows, and watching her with queer, gleaming, goat-like eyes".

Marchbanks is - seemingly without his knowing it - possessed by the Pan-spirit. Looking at the girl in an almost diabolical manner, his face gleaming and "wreathed with a startling, peculiar smile", he again gave "the most extraordinary laugh ... like an animal laughing".

This attracts the attention of the tall, clean-shaven young policeman who comes over to see what's occurring. The Pan-possessed man glared at the bobby and asked if he could hear the laughter that came out of him but didn't belong to him. At the sound of this diabolical laughter, "something roused in the blood of the girl and of the policeman" and they edged closer to one another, their bodies touching:

"Having held herself all her life intensely aloof from physical contact, and never having let any man touch her, she now, with a certain nymph-like voluptuousness, allowed the large hand of the young policeman to support her ... And she could feel the presence of the young policeman, through all the thickness of his dark-blue uniform, as something young and alert and bright."

Was that his truncheon, or was he equally happy to be pressing up against her ...?

The religious mania spreads: Miss James thinks she can see someone hiding among the holly bushes. This makes the Pan-possessed man in the bowler hat get even more excited and, "with curious delight", he broke into laughter again, stamping his feet on the snow covered ground, dancing, before running off like a madman.

When he finally comes to a halt, Marchbanks finds himself at the house of a beautiful Jewish woman whom Lawrence encourages us to believe is a prostitute. She has dark hair and large dark eyes. She is standing in her open doorway, believing that somebody knocked (as a working girl, she is, of course, always anticipating a knock at her door).

Asked if it was he who knocked, Marchbanks says no. But then he admits that perhaps it was him after all - but without his knowing it. He asks her if can come in and she agrees. So he enters the house, trailing after the woman "like a hound" that follows a bitch on heat, tail wagging and tongue lolling.

Meanwhile, Miss James and the policeman had arrived on the scene, just in time to see the man in the bowler hat enter the house with the woman in high heels. The girl decides there's no point waiting about and so sets off back down the hill, burning with thoughts of murder and strange superhuman power:

"Her feet felt lighter, her legs felt long and strong. She glanced over her shoulder again. The young policeman was following her, and she laughed to herself. Her limbs felt so lithe and so strong, if she wished she could easily run faster than he. If she wished she could easily kill him, even with her hands.
      So it seemed to her. But why kill him? He was a decent young fellow. She had in front of her eyes the dark face among the holly bushes, with the brilliant, mocking eyes. Her breast felt full of power, and her legs felt long and strong and wild. She was surprised herself at the strong, bright, throbbing sensation beneath her breasts, a sensation of triumph and rosy anger. Her hands felt keen on her wrists. She who had always declared she had not a muscle in her body! Even now, it was not muscle, it was a sort of flame."

It's precisely this kind of writing that Lawrence's critics object to, finding it fatuous and bombastic; a dubious mix of lurid sexual fantasy and sulphurous theology. But for those of us who love him, it's his idiosyncratic narrative style which most appeals. Of course it risks becoming ludicrous, or sometimes losing its way in a semantic fog; for it's not easy to articulate unconscious thoughts and feelings, or describe those things which lie outside conventional language. But that's why speculative and experimental writers and thinkers, like Lawrence, who attempt this should, I think, be praised for their courage.

Anyway, let us return to the story ...

It begins to snow heavily and, despite her deafness, Miss James hears voices all around her. She knows that he's come back, although the god who has returned remains nameless in the tale. The snowstorm intensifies; there are flashes of lightning and she laughs at the young policeman whose state of nervous panic made him look "like a frightened dog that sees something uncanny".

They come to a church with its doors flung wide open, allowing the wind and the voices to enter and whirl about, howling and calling. Now, for the first time, she too hears the "strange, naked sound" of laughter. The policeman was silent and fearful. He stood cowed, "with his tail between his legs, listening to the strange noises in the church".

The demonic forces that have been set loose wreck the interior of the church and amidst all the chaos of snow, wind, and laughter, there is the gay sound of pipes playing and the marvellous scent of almond blossom, like that of a Mediterranean spring.

Finally, the girl and the policeman arrive at her house. He is frightened and cold, so asks if he may come in and warm himself. She agrees, telling him he may make up a fire in the sitting-room, but to kindly not disturb her in her bedroom.

Upon waking the next morning, Miss James, an artist, inspects her own paintings and laughs at their absurd, almost grotesque character. Miraculously, she can now hear the birds singing without the need of her mechanical hearing-device. But the poor policeman, however, is distraught, having become mysteriously lame overnight. Not that the girl seems overly concerned with his condition, preferring to sit down before her window, in the sun, and to reflect on the fact that the world had now been genuinely transformed:

"Suddenly the world had become quite different: as if some skin or integument had broken, as if the old, mouldering London sky had crackled and rolled back, like an old skin, shrivelled, leaving an absolutely new blue heaven."

She also reflects, as Lawrentian heroines are wont to do, on love and sex and decides that she doesn't want either. For modern men, she decides - at least those of her acquaintance - are all a bit doggy and infra dig; either messing around with prostitutes, like Marchbanks, or incapable of acting with any real courage and authority - despite wearing a policeman's uniform - when confronted by life (and proud womanhood) in all its savage splendour.

She vaguely wishes that the laughing god had ravished her as he had ravaged the church, so that she might have emerged "new and tender out of the old, hard skin". But at least she had her hearing restored, so she couldn't complain.

At this point, Marchbanks arrives, as it was his habit "to come and take breakfast with her each morning." He asks her about the young policeman and she interrogates him about the Jewish-looking woman. They are friends, not lovers, she and he, but clearly intimate and concerned with one another's affairs.

When they eventually, decide to check on the young policeman downstairs they find him understandably upset because of his sudden lameness. Slowly pulling off his sock, he reveals "his white left foot curiously clubbed, like the weird paw of some animal". Looking at it makes him cry: "And as he sobbed, the girl heard again the low, exulting laughter."

As if the situation weren't already disturbing enough, Marchbanks now lets out a strange, yelping cry, like a wounded animal: "His white face was drawn, distorted in a curious grin, that was chiefly agony but partly [the] wild recognition ... of a man who realises he had made a final, and this time fatal, fool of himself."

And then, "with a queer shuddering laugh he pitched forward on the carpet and lay writhing for a moment on the floor", before lying completely still "in a weird, distorted position, like a man struck by lightening." Miss James stares at the body in a somewhat nonplussed manner and enquires of the policeman if her friend Mr. Marchbanks is dead. The officer, however, was trembling with such terror and his teeth chattering so violently, that it took him some moments to finally stammer that it certainly looked that way.

A faint smell of almond blossom once more filled the air - sweeter, certainly, than the foul stench of sulphur, but just as infernal in nature it seems ...


See: D. H. Lawrence, 'The Last Laugh', in The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1995). 

Note: thanks to the University of Adelaide, the story can also be read online: click here.

This post is dedicated to Catherine Brown: may she always have the last laugh ...


SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave

13 May 2017

D. H. Lawrence: The Reluctant Londoner

Unused design for the 14th International 
D. H. Lawrence Conference (London, 3-8 July 2017) 
by Stephen Alexander 
(Based on a 1929 film poster by the Stenberg Brothers)


Asked to name places associated with D. H. Lawrence and his fiction, many readers will say Italy, whilst others immediately mention Mexico. Those familiar with the novel Kangaroo often fondly recall his descriptions of the Australian bush. Mostly, however, they think back to the dreary coal mining district in the East Midlands from out of which Lawrence rather miraculously extracted himself. 

One thing's for sure: not many readers will say London - even though he and a surprising number of his characters have interesting connections to the capital. In fact, according to Lawrence scholar Catherine Brown, Lawrence visited the city around fifty times between October 1908 and September 1926 and not only did he live and work there at certain periods, he even married Frieda at a registry office in Kensington. 

Of course, given his aggressive anti-urbanism, it's not surprising to discover that Lawrence didn't much like being in the Smoke and that many of his comments and fictional portrayals of the city tend to be negative - although he does admit in a newspaper article written in 1928 to having found it exhilarating upon arrival as a young man:

"Twenty years ago, London was to me thrilling, thrilling, thrilling, the vast and roaring heart of all adventure. It was not only the heart of the world, it was the heart of the world’s living adventure. How wonderful the Strand, the Bank, Charing Cross at night, Hyde Park in the morning!"

But today, says Lawrence in the same article, all the excitement seems crushed out of the city - not least by the sheer weight of traffic, massively rolling nowhere.

Thus, I suppose Lawrence might at best be described as a reluctant Londoner; one who quickly grew tired of its charms - including the West End girls who had at one time fascinated the Eastwood boy as they paraded along Piccadilly, displaying their non-provincial beauty. Not because he was tired of life, as Samuel Johnson would have it, but, on the contrary, because he found it lacking in vitality and full of deathly dullness and the noise of endless chatter ...

And speaking of endless chatter - though hopefully it won't be deathly dull in character - the 14th International D. H. Lawrence Conference will be held in London this summer (3-8 July). Readers interested in finding out more can click here.


Notes

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Why I Don't Like Living in London', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 119-22. 

See also Catherine Brown, 'London in D. H. Lawrence's Words', which can be found as an article on her website - catherinebrown.org - or accessed directly by clicking here

Readers interested in a related post to this one might like to click here.