You Must Not Read This Book Before You Die
By Kat Robinson
You know you are fully satisfying the criteria of life fail when you write an article on a book one should never read which is on the module you are currently undertaking. By choice.
I feel guilty for writing this article too, as firstly, it is taught by the living legend that is Professor Herbert, who is the only thing that keeps the notion of attending class in any way palatable. Similarly, I feel guilty and disloyal to DH. I feel, had we met, we would have got on very well. He was something of a rogue in his day, making outlandish statements and in one instance claimed ‘This ship cannot sink, I am on it!’ and when asked if he thought himself to be some sort of messiah merely stroked his beard and responded ‘Well, you said it!’. I like to tell this story as if it were an amusing anecdote about a personal acquaintance.
The problem with The Rainbow, and several of the author’s other works is that of repetition. Usually writers edit and refine their work before producing a final polished outcome. No. Not Lawrence. One imagines he feels the needless repetition to give a sense of the character’s stream of consciousness. No. It is, in fact, unbearable. Because of this style of narrative the novel becomes the tale of a family through three generations, delivered in the style of your Nan. Repetition. The same thing said in three different ways. Wild leaps of topic. Not to mention leaps of logic.
The characters are all, essentially, schizophrenic masochists. When they aren’t kissing each other whilst thinking how they want to destroy the other, they are quivering, looking out windows and turning pale, completely divorced from reality. The plot is meant to be centrally focussed on the various love stories, but this is not love as we know it. In the space of two pages characters can go from despising to loving one another in a kind of rollercoaster of confusion that gives the reader whiplash.
Without sounding too sardonic, the most enjoyable part of the hefty novel is the ending. We see the character of Ursula ‘reacting’ to horses for twelve pages, when the summation of her thoughts could be captured in one sentence: Ursula looked at the horses, and was quite afraid of them. She then proceeds to climb and fall out of a tree. All of this taking place in the rain of course. She then ‘moves amongst the horses’ and consequently gets trampled. Abandoning all logic she decides to marry the man she hates having broken off their relationship two days earlier. She telegrams him only to received a response of ‘ Soz. Got married’. All sense of time and context gets checked at the door in this novel.
The only positive hints and tips I got from reading The Rainbow follow thus:
1.All men in Lawrence’s day had moustaches or beards. Do not trust the clean shaven.
2. Marry the person you hate the least in order to guarantee a happy (ish) life
3. The main cause of death in the era was drowning in puddles. Watch out for them puddles, they’ll get ya everytime.
I feel guilty for writing this article too, as firstly, it is taught by the living legend that is Professor Herbert, who is the only thing that keeps the notion of attending class in any way palatable. Similarly, I feel guilty and disloyal to DH. I feel, had we met, we would have got on very well. He was something of a rogue in his day, making outlandish statements and in one instance claimed ‘This ship cannot sink, I am on it!’ and when asked if he thought himself to be some sort of messiah merely stroked his beard and responded ‘Well, you said it!’. I like to tell this story as if it were an amusing anecdote about a personal acquaintance.
The problem with The Rainbow, and several of the author’s other works is that of repetition. Usually writers edit and refine their work before producing a final polished outcome. No. Not Lawrence. One imagines he feels the needless repetition to give a sense of the character’s stream of consciousness. No. It is, in fact, unbearable. Because of this style of narrative the novel becomes the tale of a family through three generations, delivered in the style of your Nan. Repetition. The same thing said in three different ways. Wild leaps of topic. Not to mention leaps of logic.
The characters are all, essentially, schizophrenic masochists. When they aren’t kissing each other whilst thinking how they want to destroy the other, they are quivering, looking out windows and turning pale, completely divorced from reality. The plot is meant to be centrally focussed on the various love stories, but this is not love as we know it. In the space of two pages characters can go from despising to loving one another in a kind of rollercoaster of confusion that gives the reader whiplash.
Without sounding too sardonic, the most enjoyable part of the hefty novel is the ending. We see the character of Ursula ‘reacting’ to horses for twelve pages, when the summation of her thoughts could be captured in one sentence: Ursula looked at the horses, and was quite afraid of them. She then proceeds to climb and fall out of a tree. All of this taking place in the rain of course. She then ‘moves amongst the horses’ and consequently gets trampled. Abandoning all logic she decides to marry the man she hates having broken off their relationship two days earlier. She telegrams him only to received a response of ‘ Soz. Got married’. All sense of time and context gets checked at the door in this novel.
The only positive hints and tips I got from reading The Rainbow follow thus:
1.All men in Lawrence’s day had moustaches or beards. Do not trust the clean shaven.
2. Marry the person you hate the least in order to guarantee a happy (ish) life
3. The main cause of death in the era was drowning in puddles. Watch out for them puddles, they’ll get ya everytime.