I received an electronic ARC via NetGalley.

This is a rather meandering but very interesting biography of D.H. Lawrence, but often at the very least as much about the people around him (and literary and other influences on him) as about Lawrence himself.

I admittedly found it rather slow to start, but some of that may simply be because I am not particularly familiar with Lawrence or his writing. I'm fairly sure I've never read any of his works, and fascinating as much of this book was, it doesn't encourage me to try. I usually enjoyed the discussions of the people around Lawrence and their relationships with one another more interesting than the more direct biographical material, and Lawrence certainly comes out something less than likable in the story of his own life.

While the book is structured on using Dante's Divine Comedy as a framework for understanding Lawrence and his work, I did sometimes find the discussions of Dante somewhat distracting from the narrative of Lawrence's life and times. This isn't a criticism of the structural choice or of the quality of these sections, they just had a tendency to unmoor me from the progression of the narrative and forget what year range was being discussed.

It's an interesting book regardless, and even if it doesn't particularly make me want to take a dive into the works of D.H. Lawrence, it did inspire me to read more about some of his acquaintances.

A fiercely original, refreshing look at the life of one of the 20th centuries most complicated authors. In THE BURNING MAN, Frances Wilson delivers a compelling and beautifully researched portrait--within an unusual framing device. Highly recommended.

Frances Wilson has written a terrific book about a controversial literary figure. While some of the digressions weren’t as compelling as others, she clearly lays out her argument for rescuing DH Lawrence from obscurity. She can also be witty and incisive about the many figures circling Lawrence.

Superb biography. I found it totally compelling. And certainly not “just another biography”, for Wilson casts an original and insightful eye over the old material and brings something fresh to the table. Lawrence came vividly to life for me in this meticulously researched book and it’s a must-read for fans and non-fans alike.

Full review forthcoming in the Chicago Review of Books.

Excerpt from that review:

Frances Wilson has shown in her previous biographies of Dorothy Wordsworth and Thomas De Quincey that she is both an innovative and a careful scholar. Burning Man proves her talents once again. She recognizes that hers is “a book of nonfiction which is also a work of imagination.” Burning Man is not a straightforward biography but instead a series of vignettes recounting lesser-known stories. Wilson deemphasizes information explored in traditional Lawrence biographies and instead places at center stage “episodes and experiences that earlier biographers have passed over.” She explains that she has given “major roles to those figures otherwise assumed to be minor and minor roles to those figures generally assumed to be major”—not because she sees the more traditional formulations as incorrect but because she seeks to give readers a new viewpoint to broaden the story. The book might not be appreciated by readers unfamiliar with the life and work (both novels and nonfiction) of D. H. Lawrence. Nevertheless, it is certainly a book worth approaching after (if necessary) a bit of preliminary study.

Lawrence begins one of his late poems with the line, “Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, cancelled, made nothing?” Being “cancelled,” suggests the speaker of the poem, allows a person to “really change.” He named this poem “Phoenix”—after the mythical bird who dies in a bed of flames and is reborn, Lawrence’s symbol for himself which he used throughout his life. In her biography, Frances Wilson—alongside other recent biographers such as Geoff Dyer and John Worthen--clears away the smoldering ashes and allows Lawrence, like a phoenix, to rise again for our time.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an advanced copy of this new literary biography.

Frances Wilson in her new biography Burning Man: The Trials of D. H. Lawrence, comes at her subject not at the beginning of his life, nor his end but at his most creative, troubling, and wandering. Focusing on the years 1915 starting with his troubles on The Rainbow from censors and publishers to the year 1925 when Lawrence is diagnosed with tuberculosis, Wilson follows a large cast of characters who appear in various forms throughout his writings. With focus on the lesser known characters Ms. Wilson explores his relationships with both his wife and his patron, and others and how that framed the character that was Lawrence. In addition the amount of traveling he did, during some very difficult times is astonishing.

This is not an easy book to read. Familiarity with the texts and the man are helpful. However the structure, borrowed from Dante's The Divine Comedy is intriguing and carrys the narrative along. The stories are generally interesting, and and amusing. I don't think I would like to have been around him much. I don't think my opinion was changed on either the man or his writing, but I did very much enjoy the journey as I read.

This may be a love-it or hate-it book for. Frances Wilson believes DH Lawrence is today an under-appreciated author, and this unorthodox biography focus on three periods in his life. She structures the book to parallel the tripartite Divine Comedy (partly in homage to Lawrence's reverence for Dante). Wilson tends to bring to the forefront "characters" in Lawrence's life who have previously been in the background, especially Ottoline Morell and Mabel Dodge Luhan. Both were "wild women" in their time and contemptuous of most social constraints. It may be that the author chooses people like these to accentuate the wildness she admires in Lawrence, and it may also be why she has chosen an (at times) chaotic method of telling about Lawrence's life. Some readers may consider this book ground-breaking; others may consider it unnecessarily helter-skelter. Wilson says in the book, "reading him today is like tuning into a radio station whose frequency keeps changing…" and a certain number of readers will feel this also reflects the experience of reading this book.

If you like reading D.H.Lawrence as much as I have, and are interested in how he uses people in his life to create characters, then you will not fail to find this a fascinating book. For instance, when talking about the coal mines, which surely were a trial for coal mining families specifically due to the mental illness and trauma they resulted in, the author shows how Lawrence's father, Arthur Lawrence, whom Lawrence "despised as a semi-literate drunk," falsified his role in that business by telling Lawrence's mother he was a "contractor." He did not mean a white collar worker, but butty, a kind of subcontractor who actually went down the pit and had charge of a section of the coal face. He was paid weekly by the load. It is hard to believe Lawrence could really have despised a man who had, in Wilson's words," taught him the name of every bird, tree and flower." Lots to contemplate here.

A superbly written biography of D.H. Lawrence, written in a beautiful analogy to Dante's Divine Comedy. Many episodes were revelatory gems. At times the books arch got lost in the details, but the information and prose always felt rich.