Mr. Noon

D.H. Lawrence Mr. Noon (1922)
Reading The Lost Girl back in October, I half formed a theory about the extent to which Dave had rewritten the first draft. The Lost Girl is peppered, albeit unevenly, with humorous asides to the reader which seem a little uncharacteristic, so I guessed, given that The Lost Girl revised material written a number of years earlier, that its unusually chatty style perhaps represented a throwback to the earlier rendering, something attempted before Lawrence had found his voice. Anyway, Mr. Noon was written immediately following the publication of The Lost Girl and is full of winks, nods, and comedy turns to the notional camera so I guess I was way out, and this slightly frivolous breaking of the fourth wall was something with which the author dabbled in the very early twenties. Mr. Noon may even have been Lawrence seeing how far he could push it, which is perhaps why the novel was abandoned, only to be posthumously published in its unfinished form.

It may also be significant that Mr. Noon was his most directly autobiographical novel at the time of writing, novelising his move to Europe with Frieda, meeting her family, and associated attempts to rationalise her rampaging polygamy without jeopardising the marriage - given that she clearly had no intention of reigning it in. So perhaps it was all just a little too close to the surface in terms of the subject.

In any case, whilst Lawrence's testimony is massively entertaining as he takes the piss out of himself, his characters, dramatic conventions, readers, and even takes a few swipes at his critics, the currents of chatty wisecracks alternating with the mostly autobiographical observations of life in Germany then Italy, and pseudo-spiritual material foreshadowing The Plumed Serpent's exploration of pre-Christian theology and nature worship, make for uneven reading. Indeed, the narrative switches are so pronounced as to reduce the more direct addresses to near incoherent jabbering. It could have worked but it didn't. It could have worked after a couple of rewrites, but Lawrence decided to direct the energy into what came after, presumably abandoning Mr. Noon as a failed experiment.

That said, it's still worth reading; and the first part - set in what is obviously Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, crackles with more than enough energy to justify its having been rescued from limbo. The second part finally comes together once the Lawrences take their leave of Frieda's family and struggle to get by in northern Italy, but after the main flabby and distinctly uneven whole of the second part, it somehow isn't quite enough.