D.H. Lawrence - a Biography

Jeffrey Meyers D.H. Lawrence - a Biography (1990)
I picked this one up back in the late nineties during an unusually heavy D.H. Lawrence binge - which is a sentence you don't see every day - along with the biography by Brenda Maddox. I'd already read the Maddox version as a library book, but read it again because I'd enjoyed it and so somehow never got around to this one, having heard it wasn't anywhere near so good as The Married Man. Nosing around online would seem to yield the same opinion expressed many times over, specifically that Meyers didn't do anything like so good a job as Brenda Maddox. It's been a while since I read the Maddox biography but I'm no longer convinced. This one feels pretty fucking thorough to me, and I find it encouraging that Meyers' other biographies seem mostly to be of persons from Lawrence's circle, or at least approximately adjacent - Wyndham Lewis, Katherine Mansfield, Joseph Conrad and so on, contrasting with Brenda Maddox having written biographies of Elizabeth Taylor and Margaret Thatcher; which isn't to say that The Married Man wasn't as great as I seem to remember, only that Jeffrey Meyers wasn't fucking around here.

As biographies go, this one is hardly what you'd call an easy option and becomes distinctly chewy in places. Meyers combines his account of Lawrence's life with a fairly extensive analysis of the autobiographical aspects of the man's writings, meaning there's a degree of zipping back and forth between actual events and the publication of Lawrence's vaguely allegorical reiterations. Progress is therefore occasionally slow, with discussion conducted at an almost archaeological pace, but the book rewards the reader's effort and at no point does it become a slog. In other words - and in response to the naysayers - if all you really want to know is which celebrities he used to hang out with or what his favourite colour was, this probably isn't the biography for you.

For the most part I've generally considered myself moderately knowledgeable regarding the life and works of our Dave - hardly an expert but blessed with at least some understanding of the guy. Meyers' biography has therefore been one hell of an eye opener and positively revelatory in places, not least in confirming hunches which I've felt were probably on the money without quite being able to say why - not least dispelling the notion that he was ever a fascist in any meaningful sense, as distinct from a man prone to expressing an occasionally caustic or otherwise uninformed opinion. It was obviously a fucking nightmare having Lawrence as a friend, but there were reasons for his extraordinarily abrasive personality, and it clearly wasn't all about the thunder clouds. Indeed, Meyers successfully communicates what a joy his companionship could be under the right circumstances and why D.H. inspired such loyalty and devotion. Part of my reason for reading this biography right now was so as to be better armed when tackling The Lost Girl - which is the next one on the Loz pile - and I'm very glad I did.