Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence

The title of Geoff Dyer's Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D.H. Lawrence is taken from something Lawrence wrote of his own author-inspired work: "Out of sheer rage I've begun my book on Thomas Hardy. It will be about anything but Thomas Hardy I am afraid--queer stuff--but not bad." Just so, Dyer's book is not really about D.H. Lawrence--it is like one of "those wild books" Dyer describes "in which there is no attempt to cover the ground thoroughly or reasonably"--though Lawrence's life and writing do provide the book with what framework it has.In conversational prose that makes his meandering narrative a fast read, Dyer recounts his experiences while trying to write a serious book about Lawrence. We follow the author as he travels around the world visiting the places Lawrence lived--Sicily, England, New Mexico--and while he pores over Lawrence's preserved correspondence. In the process we learn a little about Lawrence--he paid his bills on time, he is unlikely to have been comfortable naked, he tended to be angry much of the time, he was handy around the house. Mostly we learn about Lawrence's characteristics because they are shared by Dyer, about whom we learn a great deal. (Dyer, too, pays his bills on time, though he is not handy around the house.)Dyer's defining characteristic is what he describes as his "rheumatism of the will, this chronic inability to see anything through." It is the reason he cannot decide finally where in the world he wants to live (a trait he shares with Lawrence), why he therefore lives "perpetually on the brink of potential departure," not acquiring the "trappings of permanence"--because while he may detest his current living arrangements, he suspects that he would regret at once the decision to give up the sublet he now finds stultifying.Dyer's paralyzing indecision likewise renders him unable to do the exercises that will repair his knee and save him from continual pain, unable to decide whether or not to pack a particular book in his luggage, unable to write the serious study of Lawrence he originally had in mind, unable to write the book he was postponing writing by beginning the book on Lawrence. It is a wonder, in the end, that Dyer manages to conduct his life at all.Dyer is also, like Lawrence, an angry man. While Lawrence was allegedly "angry even in his sleep," Dyer describes himself, sometimes amusingly, as cursing and muttering under his breath throughout the day, raging over insignificant annoyances."A few days ago the local delicatessen had run out of the luxury doughnuts which I have for my elevenses and on which I depend utterly.... Right, I thought to myself, turning on my heel and walking out, grim-faced and tight-lipped, I will return later in the day and burn the place to the ground with all the staff in it--friendly, charming staff, incidentally, who have often let me owe them money--so that they could experience a fraction of the pain that I had suffered by not being able to have my morning doughnut."Dyer complains in the book about a lot of things--Italians, children, parents of children, literary criticism. I thought him a bit obnoxious early on in my reading, when he faulted the Greek fellow he'd rented a moped from for refusing to return his deposit on the bike after he (Dyer) had totaled it (through his own fault). His attitude becomes somewhat more forgivable when you come to understand that he recognizes, at least sometimes, how inappropriate his anger is.There were times that Dyer's writing annoyed me. Particularly in the beginning of the book, he tended to repeat himself. He may have done so in a conscious attempt to add to the informal feel of his prose, but if so I think he went too far. For example:"The next morning I could not move. I had to be helped out of bed. I couldn't move."On a number of occasions, too, I was left wondering whether he was getting sloppy with his writing or was achieving some poetic depth I couldn't appreciate:"The puddles by the roadside offered no reflection: the water was too old for that, was no longer sensitive to light."But there were also a number of things in Dyer's book that I quite liked. There was the occasional simple, lovely sentence: "Not a great choice [of restaurants] from my point of view since sea-food is vile filth which I will eat under no circumstances." The relationship between Dyer's acquaintances Ciccio and Renata, who phone one another compulsively throughout the day, was priceless. And perhaps my favorite part of the book--the only part I found downright funny--was Dyer's description of his mortifying experience giving a lecture about Lawrence in Denmark. Thoroughly unprepared for the talk and sick with a bad cold, Dyer tried to use his illness and an ill-timed nose bleed to, at the least, gain a measure of sympathy from the audience. Which he failed to do.As a window into the personality of a writer--Dyer, of course, not Lawrence--Out of Sheer Rage makes good, if not great, reading.Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

Dyer's quasi-treatise on D.H. Lawrence amused me to no end when I started reading it. Although the book's subtitle -- WRESTLING WITH D.H. LAWRENCE -- leads one to believe the book is about the famed author, it is actually more about wrestling as a life choice. Wrestling with one's desires, one's life, one's hopes and dreams. Dyer's opening pages flicker back and forth between the occasional comment on Lawrence, mingled with rambling monologues on how he manages to sabatoge his own pursuits due to his overwhelming tendency for procrastination and self-doubt. "One of the reasons, in fact, that it was impossible to get started on either the Lawrence book or the novel was because I was so preoccupied with where to live. I could live anywhere, all I had to do was choose -- but it was impossible to choose because I could live anywhere. There were no constraints on me and because of this it was impossible to choose ... when all you have to go on is your own desires, then life becomes considerably more difficult, not to say intolerable."This kind of ironic introspection is a clever counterpoint to Dyer's actual academic purpose, but it stales with use. Dyer uses the exact same formula to explain why people don't wear seatbelts, why he's bad at DIY home projects, why his knee hurts, and why he always brings the wrong books on his various vacations. On the one hand, it's kind of funny. On the other hand, the same joke over and over gets old.Dyer's conceit here is that he mingles these long-winded mutterings with the occasional delve into Lawrence's own life and letters. He does this with seamless skill at the beginning (noting, for example, that Lawrence himself struggled with the decision of where to live), but the further along his book progresses, the more the technical analysis juts out, at odds with the rest of the awkwardly intimate details that Dyer gives of his own life and losses.What ends up happening is that you get a vague idea of what Dyer and Lawrence are/were both like as people, but without ever getting the full force of that rage that the title claims is there. The book's title is derived from a quote by Lawrence, but it would've been more accurate to have replaced "rage" with "despair," since the book is less about Dyer and Lawrence than it is about how to wrestle with the overwhelming amount of ennui and confusion that all people (but writers especially) must deal with on a near-daily basis.The goal is lofty, but the book's answers are a bit pat, especially when Dyer wraps things up and feels compelled to put a neat, little bow on the top of the sloppy, endearing mess he's just created. What starts as a humorous co-mingling of philosophy and self-sabotage turns quickly into a poor blend of a literary exegesis with a caustic self-help concept. "That is the hallmark of academic criticism: it kills everything it touches," Dyer writes. He hopes to expound on Lawrence by using his own life -- "...how can you know anything about literature if all you've done is read books?" -- but since his life is such a shoddy and repetitive affair, his novel becomes equally shoddy and repetitive. Hilarious in spots, illuminating in others, and eloquently revealing, OUT OF SHEER RAGE is still missing the furious focus and strength that would make it a truly good book.

I've never read a book quite like this and I loved it. If you are looking for a typical academic discussion of D. H. Lawrence, look elsewhere. This is about Lawrence and Dyer, both struggling with life. Look at the title: Rage and Wrestling. It is no easy task for Dyer to settle down to write his book. "Lawrence became a prisoner of departures" writes Dyer as he rushes from England to Sicily to Mexico to New Mexico, always ending up in the wrong place for the wrong reasons. When I finished the book I felt that I had learned a lot about Lawrence and Dyer. Since I have read most of Lawrence, I will now do the same for Dyer. "Out of Sheer Rage" can be a wild read but well worth it.

If you like this pairing, two split-asses,just barrel thru it and you wont regret it

I can’t really tell you why this book is so good especially since it only relates obliquely to DH Lawrence. It is much more about the human condition and the plight of any writer undertaking the task of writing a book about another writer. The author employs the first person to tell a story of his own journey which touches on almost everything. His narrative voice recalls that of Fran Leibovitz, but he ultimately digs deeper than she.

An attempt to review a book is to put into words what one thinks about it. One perhaps starts off by not having a firm opinion but by the end of the review, if all goes well, one has been formulated. This does not really change the nature of the book, but it may change the person writing the review, or possibly the person reading it. It may persuade or dissuade this hypothetical reader to buy (borrow or steal) the book, or it may affirm or conflict with their existing opinion about it, if they’ve already read it – or simply read lots of reviews. It is a chain of ghosts, drawing us further and further away from the book itself, itself an articulation of an experience (either direct, vicariously, or imagined), encoded into black marks, which we translate in our minds into thoughts, feelings, images, and sounds. A homeopathic dilution of real life – that could be a working definition of fiction, creative non-fiction and especially literary criticism. Dyer’s book is, in some senses, a critique and deconstruction of this hall of mirrors. It is an anti-biography, an apparently ‘failed’ attempt at a ‘book about DH Lawrence’ (that we all end up writing, sooner or later, in the Dyerverse of ever decreasing circles – the singularity of futility which is his MO), which, in its gonzo approach of endless digression, indulgences, annoyances, paranoia, and transgressions, actually ‘succeeds’ in channelling something Lawrentian. Dyer makes endless comic capital at of the vainglorious absurdity of ‘experiential research’, while actually undertaking it – globetrotting in pursuit of Lawrence in a form of protracted displacement activity, an endless deferment of gratification – by gratifying every deferment. By the pathological deconstruction of such an approach Dyer actually reifies it, as he finally admits: ‘Had we not seen and done all these things we would not be the people we are.’ (p231). Dyer’s antics is a form of invocation – though he protest too much (ad nauseam) his aches, pains, mishaps, moments of weaknesses, fury, frustration and many failings, all help to conjure Lawrence, to embody Lawrence, to live Lawrence: ‘ hoping by this Lawrentian touch to persuade my audience of the all-consuming bond between the subject and the speaker of the talk’ as he quips about a botched talk on Lawrence he gives (p206). He argues forcibly against the aridity of dusty academic studies, far removed from Lorenzo’s full-blooded approach to life – mocking the ivory towers even as he moves to ‘Dullford’ as he calls Oxford, his very own alma mater. His restlessness and neurosis are very much first world problems from the perspective of male, white privilege, at that (the modest lower middle class roots long since abandoned), and as such, his self-ironic posturing would be facile if it wasn’t so frequently funny. And despite his disingenuity – Dyer wears his erudition very lightly – this is only a performance of philistinism within the context of … a book about DH Lawrence. Yet there is method to Dyer’s madness and there are moments of genius, or at least, great wit: ‘Spare me the drudgery of systematic examinations and give me the lightning flashes of those wild books in which there is no attempt to cover the ground thoroughly or reasonably.’ (p105) And yes, Out of Sheer Rage is full of mini-lightning flashes as we observe the synaptic pyrotechnics of Dyer’s overheated brain. It is amusing, almost transgressive, like listening in to the ‘mad’ person at the party who says all the things everyone is thinking. This is writing as Tourette’s Syndrome. Dyer plays the court jester with gusto and perhaps makes some valid points amid his buffoonery. He is entertaining, but exasperating. To spend too long in his company would be grating, but for a while his Lawrentian ‘playback theatre’ is a gloriously irreverent read. And as an approach to ‘life-writing’ it has some originality and literary merit: it has a pulse. But that is perhaps only a reviewer seeking an ending to his review and wanting something positive to end on.Kevan Manwaring

Great book! I whizzed through it in under 24hrs. I'd heard good things about Geoff Dyer, but this is the first I've read. There will be more! This one reads like a sort-of memoir, sort-of travelogue, sort-of commentary on the life and works of DH Lawrence with bit-parts for miscellaneous other writing types, most of whom, like this narrator, are afflicted with some kind of terminal procrastination ... Writers, you will no doubt see yourselves reflected - not favourably, and academics even less so - in these snippets; they're often wise, often funny, sometimes completely off-the-wall-annoying. Altogether though they add up to a wonderful story and a great book, and one with - ultimately - a positive message. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. It gives me hope.

This is the nearest book I've ever read about what it feels like to actually be in someone elses head except perhaps Karl Ove Knaussgard.Dyer almost becomes DH Lawrence in character too. Brilliant.

first half is charming is charming and funnysecond half is just the same as the first halfIt is fascinating to read and a lot could be learned of how to write in an engaging way. But the lack of variation sort of makes one bored of finishing.

I really enjoyed this book. Funny and insightful and some of it is even about DHL