Category Archives: Talks

D.H. Lawrence talk to Little Eaton Local History Society

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Twenty summers ago, my mother passed away. I was her primary carer. She had always dreamed of visiting Canada but never made it, so I went on her behalf. Although D.H. Lawrence never visited Canada, it was a significant ‘unknown’ place in his writing as it is mentioned in his first novel, The White Peacock (1911) as a place of hope “where work is strenuous, but not life; where the plains are wide, and one is not lapped in a soft valley, like an apple that falls in a secluded orchard.”[i] It is also where Constance Chatterley and Oliver Mellors consider eloping to at the end of Lawrence’s last and most infamous novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928)[ii].

On my return from Canada, I moved to Little Eaton with my then girlfriend and got some work tarmacking with a company a few doors away. It was hard work, but probably the most enjoyable job I’ve ever done in terms of camaraderie. In May, I returned to give a talk to the Little Eaton Local History Society in my current capacity as a Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University.

I began the talk with reference to Ken Dodd, explaining how he got banned from a theatre in Nottingham because he refused to get off stage. He loved performing gags and didn’t care a hoot whether people caught the last bus or not. It’s a bit like that with Lawrence. There’s so much about him that you don’t know where to start and when to end. For example, in the 24hrs before my talk there had been 16,100 files uploaded to Google about the bearded one. A quick search of Google scholar revealed 2,500,100 references. Therefore, I am always keen to emphasize that, like Manuel in Fawlty Towers, I know nothing.

What I do know about Lawrence is he escaped a mining village, travelled the world, and possessed that most important of human characteristics – curiosity. For these reasons alone I could talk about him forever but cut my talk short of the 2hr mark before a couple of snoozers started snoring.

I enjoy talking about Lawrence because he constantly prods you in the ribs and keeps you on your toes. No subject was off bounds. More importantly, he didn’t want to just know about the world he wanted to connect to it which is why he lived such a restless life. As his wife Frieda wrote in her memoir Not I, but the Wind

‘To me his relationship, his bond with everything in creation was so amazing, no preconceived ideas, just a meeting between him a creature, a tree, a cloud, anything. I called it love, but it was something else – Bejahung in German, ‘saying yes.’’[iii]

The talk was in three parts, covering a potted history of his life, home and heritage, and his self-imposed exile – with various quotes and asides thrown in along the journey. You’re always meandering with Lawrence. He sways you from side to side. He doesn’t do linear.   

But the most important task on such evenings is to get people reading. I love his letters the most because of his acerbic wit and so would make any of the eight volumes of his Collected Letters my first port of call. If you want a sneak preview, watch one of my monthly Locating Lawrence video essays on YouTube. In terms of novels, you can’t go wrong with The Rainbow or Sons and Lovers. John Worthen’s The Life of an Outsider is a very user-friendly biography for those wanting an overview of his life and how it shaped his writing. In terms of contemporary fiction inspired by Lawrencian mythology, try Alison MacLeod’s Tenderness or Rachel Cusk’s Second Place. Whereas Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage is probably my favourite book of all time and gets better the more familiar you become with Lawrence.

To join the D.H. Lawrence Society and enjoy monthly talks, an annual festival, and a free copy of the Journal of D.H. Lawrence Studies, visit the website here. To join the Little Eaton Local History Society visit here.

If you would like me to give a talk on Lawrence, get in contact.

[i] D. H. Lawrence, The White Peacock, with a Preface by Harry T. Moore (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1966), 67

[ii] For more on these points see see Evelyn Hinz ‘D. H. Lawrence and “Something Called ‘Canada’”’ Dalhousie Review, Vol 54 (2), 1974

[iii] Frieda Lawrence, Not I, But the Wind… (Delphi Classics, 2017)

The Defiant Individualism of Alan Sillitoe’s Anti-heroes

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In my previous life as a journalist, I developed the vital skill of reusing content. An interview with a writer could be used across multiple publications if you used your quotes judicially and changed the slant of each subsequent article. Likewise, a book review works as 100 words, 250 words, 1000 words, depending on the publication.

These principles of economy remain with me in education as I try to strike a balance between researching and writing content for new modules and taking on other commissions. It was with this in mind that I agreed to give my annual talk to the Leamington Literature Society on the emergence of the anti-hero in post-WWII literature as I was also researching the writing of Alan Sillitoe for a first-year module I lead called ‘Writing in a UNESCO City of Literature’.

I love giving talks to literary societies as the membership tends to be retired, educated, and with a bit of life under their belts. So conversations afterwards are animated and challenging and leave me thinking about things slightly differently than when I entered the building.

The anti-hero can be characterised as being morally ambiguous and at odds with society. Their appeal is they reflect the uncertainty, alienation, and cynicism of the post-war era, providing a more authentic and relatable way of understanding the human condition in a rapidly changing world.

The talk outlined eight key factors that had led to this outlook, one of which is disillusionment with traditional values. Having witnessed the horrors of war firsthand, many felt disillusioned by the ideals promoted during the war, such as patriotism, honour, and the concept of the “noble hero.” The horrors of war challenged previously held beliefs about good and evil and simplistic solutions to complex problems no longer appealed. Superman was out.

Arthur Seaton, the hard-working beer-guzzling anti-hero at the heart of Sillitoe’s debut novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, warns “yer never believe what the papers tell yer, do yer? If yer do then yer want yer brains testin’. They never tell owt but lies. That’s one thing I do know.” Goodness knows what he’d have made of Twitter.

Similarly, old values around class and etiquette are challenged when Arthur mocks a factory worker on his break “Some blokes ‘ud drink piss if it was handed to ‘em in china cups.” Seaton develops his own moral universe and is not swayed by perceived wisdom. He trusts nobody but himself and is ruthless in his pursuit of happiness. Charismatic and endlessly quotable, he’s a delight to read – though I’d steer clear of him if he was my neighbour.

If you want to learn the other seven factors, you’ll have to book my talk. But the fact that surprised the audience the most was Arthur Seaton earned more as a pieceworker in 1958 than a professional footballer. How times have changed…

I always leave my talks with a recommended reading list because the purpose of such talks is to get people reading, and hopefully with a different means of perceiving texts.

For anti-heroes in Sillitoe’s work, see Colin Smith in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1959), Arthur Seaton in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958), and Ernest Burton in A Man of his Time (2004).

For anti-heroes in post-WWII literature see Yossarian in Catch-22 (1961), Jim Dixon in Lucky Jim (1954), Joe Lampton in Room at the Top (1957), Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye (1951), and my favourite anti-hero of all time, Meursault in The Stranger (1942).

Links

Leamington Literature Society Facebook Group

Leamington-literary-society

Leamington talk from 2014