D.H. Lawrence

Ugh. Look at this guy.  What a little prick.

Can we talk about how D.H. Lawrence has SEVEN works pn this list?  Wtf.  Does this not seem excessive, and not to mention a little biased?  Who approved this, I swear.  To make matters worse, I'm simply not a fan.  Everything he writes just sounds like a rich white guy in a parlor filled with other identical men trying really hard to string together the best words to sound the most impressive.  But, as I've signed up to this, here we go I guess.

The Fox is an unsettling little story that is heavy in symbolism in a way that makes it hard to take seriously.  On top of that, Lawrence's voice is long winded and over-explained, and it gives him little credit for being an established writer.  It feels like a first draft that didn't get much editing done, and that makes it rather disappointing.   There is a lot of finesse in being subtle about your intentions in a story, and this story definitely did not even attempt that.  Maybe it goes with the theme of following blindly with what you're told, because reading The Fox felt like I was pushed through doing something I didn't exactly want to do by a greater force.  I did, however, appreciate March's strength as a heroin, and was also interested in one of the final thoughts about the level of one's happiness remaining constant, as it is something I have faced and thought a lot about lately, growing older.  The author was 37 when this story was published though, so I guess what that tells me is that I only have more of the same to face as the years stack up.

Women in Love: What is even the point of this, and why is it so goddamn long?  Here's D.H again, talking to himself and trying to prove how smart he is to no one in particular.  At least The Fox had a plot but this one had none that I could detect, and the pointless conversations just kept going on and on and on.  I started wondering whether Lawrence thinks women are intelligent, or evil, or both, because it's sure hard to tell.  Men and women alike, his characters are extremely fickle, and yes, perhaps that is the true nature of people, but there is no way that anyone in the history of the world ever acted so ridiculously as these characters do.  Lawrence's outlook on life seems incredibly miserable.  Damn artists.  This one took me months to read because I was basically fidgeting (literally) through every chapter, struggling to go on.

Dear god, 5 more of these horrible stories.  Kill me now.