D. H. Lawrence

June 5, 1990
In a book glimmering with insights, the author of the acclaimed Hemingway presents a fresh look at Lawrence. Telling of the coal miner's son fascinated with the ``elemental carbon'' in people, Meyers recreates the difficult friend who alienated Bertrand Russell, Ford Maddox Ford, E. M. Forster and Katherine Mansfield because he tried to change them in life and satirized them in fiction. Illuminated as well is the husband whose failure to dominate wife Frieda led him into fervid explorations of man-to-man love. Meyers's Lawrence is also an angry prophet; the victim of scandals aroused by The Rainbow and Lady Chatterley's Lover ; the mystical proponent of ``blood-consciousness''; the celebrant of, in Lawrence's words, the ``magnificent here and now of life in the flesh''; and the restless global traveler fleeing the unacknowledged tuberculosis that would kill him at age 44, in 1930. Revealing the fiery genius who could write in a busy kitchen or under a tree, Meyers's emphases seem right and his interpretations legitimate.ok? because they are only interpretations/right.gs Photos not seen by PW.