Lawrence is another "many such cases" instance on gender I think. He's a man, but there is something of Paglia's psychic transsexual about him-something I think he was aware of and disliked, hence the didactic and not always convincing misogyny (which you get really heavily in Aaron's Rod, which ends in an almost-Melvillean "lets be men for each other apart from women" moment of Nietzchean epiphany) in the second half of his oeuvre. There's something very proto-yaoi about the way he seems sometimes to think that only a man can every truly understand, love etc another man-curious given his entanglements with women. It's strange that he was at one time considered a paradigmatic author of modern masculinity.
Yes, that sounds right. Still need to read Aaron's Rod; Wilson says that one was based directly on the gay guys he was hanging out with in Italy. I like the idea of yaoi Lawrence. Somebody should do The Rainbow/Women in Love as a 100-volume shojo series.
In terms of reception there’s a certain kinship to Hemingway (although he of course, was a much more extreme case) there, and I do wonder if papa will wind up in a similar place when the dust settles – returned to a place of prominence now that the sting of having him held for generations as the ideal of masculine literature has subsided. Lawrence is the better writer of course. I need to read the plumed serpent, your description here is fascinating.
Lawrence is another "many such cases" instance on gender I think. He's a man, but there is something of Paglia's psychic transsexual about him-something I think he was aware of and disliked, hence the didactic and not always convincing misogyny (which you get really heavily in Aaron's Rod, which ends in an almost-Melvillean "lets be men for each other apart from women" moment of Nietzchean epiphany) in the second half of his oeuvre. There's something very proto-yaoi about the way he seems sometimes to think that only a man can every truly understand, love etc another man-curious given his entanglements with women. It's strange that he was at one time considered a paradigmatic author of modern masculinity.
Yes, that sounds right. Still need to read Aaron's Rod; Wilson says that one was based directly on the gay guys he was hanging out with in Italy. I like the idea of yaoi Lawrence. Somebody should do The Rainbow/Women in Love as a 100-volume shojo series.
In terms of reception there’s a certain kinship to Hemingway (although he of course, was a much more extreme case) there, and I do wonder if papa will wind up in a similar place when the dust settles – returned to a place of prominence now that the sting of having him held for generations as the ideal of masculine literature has subsided. Lawrence is the better writer of course. I need to read the plumed serpent, your description here is fascinating.