D.H. Lawrence

The English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist David Herbert Lawrence ( 1885- 1930 ), who achieved notoriety for " Lady Chatterley's Lover", and "Sons and Lovers", was apparently not impressed with American culture : " The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer. It has never yet melted." That is a pretty pessimistic view, but I cannot deny its powerful impact. I have lived in the US for 37 years now, and there have been many times that I shuddered at the harshness of its psyche. The US is a country of extremes, and if the political climate is any indication, the cultural void created by it seems to fall in line with D.H. Lawrence 's prophetic pessimism. There is an inherent harshness in the way this country treats its children that perhaps explains the deep loneliness of the current generation. In all fairness, perhaps the reason this country feels so indifferent to me, culturally, is because it is a confluence of so many cultures, as evidenced in cities like New York. Perhaps the malaise is felt so strongly here, because there are so many elements to contend with. D. H. Lawrence felt absolute contempt and nausea for the lack of substance to the English psyche of his time, and there have been many times and there are times now, when I feel the same contempt for the US cultural soul as the English writer did a hundred years ago for England. Perhaps it is an artistic over-sensitivity I have been accused of by friend and foe alike, but I suspect the reasons are deeper than that. There is a fundamental element of isolation built into the American experience, and it did not end when people stopped trekking across the West in covered wagons. It seems built into the genetic code that doing things on your own for the pure sake of it is a basic requirement to being considered a full fledged American. My husband fits the reality of that. He is a deeply convinced loner, not just by nature, but by instinct. How we have managed these last 27 years with my gregarious and clan- driven nature will be the subject of future concerns and speculation. I think our obsession with things in American culture, which we now happily spread across the globe, is a telling story of how isolating the American experience has become and the difficulty at achieving true dialogue, even on a political level, let alone on an individual level. Modernity has reached an impasse, and the biggest stumbling block is our inability to have perspective. We are chasing our own tails, and getting high on the dizziness it causes. If D.H. Lawrence lived in the US today, his nausea existentially would be surprisingly similar to the nausea he felt a hundred years ago when he had grave reservations about the culture. About California he said : " California is a queer place- in a way, it has turned its back on the world, and looks into the void Pacific. It is absolutely selfish, very empty, but not false, and at least, not full of false effort. " It seems so unfortunately accurate from a philosophical point. The inability of this country to wrap itself around the issues that matter and save democracy for the future, is a sore and deeply sad reflection at its inability to come to terms with itself as a phenomenon. It has me worried. Dr. Toni Morrison was the last writer in this country to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature 20 years ago. Such a powerful nation, and where has its soul gone in the twenty years? It is lost, and we are adrift without a compass. And a nation without a soul is at risk of fading into the sunset, sooner rather than later. Let us hope that momentum will come about to turn the clock back on this most depressing scenario.