Elliot's Reading - Week of 9-5-21: Lawrence short stories

 Elliot’s Reading Week of 9-5-21

D.H. Lawrence wrote some great works (Sons and Lovers, Women in Love) and some mediocre works in just about every genre, which is to say: He wrote a lot. The short story seems like a less suitable milieu for him, as he was not known for his subtlety and concision. The 3 stories collected in the RV Cassill short fiction anthology represent a range of DHL’s work in the from; of the 3, The Horse Dealer’s Daughter is the best in my opinion: opening with an adult family, 3 brothers and a sister, in the wake of the death of the horse dealer/father who leaves them with no inheritance; the brothers joyfully more on as the sister remains in near-ruined farmhouse - and once the coast is clear, so to speak, she tries to drown herself in a mud-choked pond - and is rescued by the local vet., a friend of her brothers’, who finds himself overwhelmed by love for this unfortunate sister. The story’s worth reading for, if nothing else, the truly Lawrentian take on the passions that overtake the two, shocking them both with their suddenness and intensity. @nd story, Tickets, Please, is a pre-Feminist take on a group of women who team up to teach a brutal lesson to the man who’s been harassing them on the job - makes you want to stand and cheer for them, but as a story if feels kind of slight. 3rd story, The Rocking-Horse Winner, is DHL at his weakest, contemptuous of his characters, heavy-handed in his symbolism, and preposterous even as a moral fable. Kafka, about whom I posted recently, can get us to believe in almost any bizarre premise: A man turned into an insect? Let’s see how this plays out. DHL as always more of a moralist, a preacher, and how can we for a moment believe that this young child receives visions that enable him to foretell the fortunes of race horses? (There was a great episode of 77 Sunset Strip a million years ago about the attempt to call 6 out of 8 in an upcoming race event.)