Lawrence's Mythic Realism

BOOK REVIEWS ventionally "novelistic" features in the Wimsey-Vane trilogy, and Hall's analysis of The Maltese Falcon as "inverted romance" all develop relatively familiar ideas clearly and intelligently. The literary-historical essays tend to be a little more adventurous. Birns and Birns make a convincing case for Christie as modernist (a case authorized by Derrida, Lacan, and Greimas, they claim, though I don't see the need or even, ultimately, the relevancy of these authorities); Christianson relates the landscapes of hard-boiled fiction to the Modernist waste land; and Ewert introduces readers to the "post-modernist" work of Patrick Modiano. All of this is enlightening, though none of it is particularly surprising. The one thing I had hoped to find in this volume, and whose absence is therefore particularly disappointing, is any serious treatment of detective fiction as a product of and an influence on society and culture. Woods's Foucauldian essay on "The Emergence of the Detective" promises more than it delivers in this area (he makes no reference to D. A. Miller's work in this field, or Stephen Knight's, or Jerry Palmer's); Ready's treatment of the "feminist counter-tradition" is most welcome, but textually rather than culturally centered. What I miss is the cultural and historical richness of Michael Denning's work on thrillers and dime novels, or Miller's on the novel and the police, or Janice Radway^ on the actual readers of romance fiction. What I also miss, and blame the editors for omitting, is any sense of the racial and ethnic diversity of the genre. The only African-American writer mentioned in the book is Chester Himes, whose name appears in the introduction as an example of a "recent" adaptor "of the genre to incorporate . . . ethnic concerns" despite the fact that all of his detective fiction dates from the fifties and sixties. These omissions are important, but the included essays are certainly worth reading and having. With some well-chosen supplements, the book would niake a fine text for an undergraduate course on detective fiction and literary theory; its contents deepen our understanding of particular texts, and of the genre as a whole. William W. Stowe ___________________ Wesleyan University Lawrence's Mythic Realism Charles L. Ross. "Women in Love:'A Novel of Mythic Realism. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1991. xi + 158pp. Cloth $20.95 Paper $9.95. D. H. LAWRENCE'S tenure among the canonical modern texts in the 539 ELT : VOLUME 35:4 1992 university curriculum has been granted yet remains insecure, according to Charles L. Ross. Academics still appreciate Lawrence with but "equivocal praise" and in order to rectify this situation Ross feels "a fresh reading of the novel seems called for." "Women in Love': A Novel of Mythic Realism, the new offering in the Twayne's Masterwork Studies Series by Ross, attempts to accept its own challenge. It presents a careful analysis of Women in Love, as the title suggests, through a clear definition and explanation of mythic realism as it relates to Lawrence. Lawrence's use of myth differs from that of any of the other moderns because it is "re-creative rather than allusive." In other words, the characters and their motivations, that is the narrative line, remain realistic while at the same time their underlying impulses connect with the natural impulses from which myth originally sprang. This blend of myth and realism contributes greatly to the power of Lawrence's work, and Ross's elucidation of it contributes greatly to our understanding of Women in Love. Ross divides his text into two sections. He prefaces his study of Women in Love with a three-chapter section on the historical and literary context for the work. Here he discusses the composition, importance, and critical reception of the novel itself. The first of these chapters succinctly covers the major biographical events of Lawrence's life relevant to his fiction (e.g., location, parents, travel, war, women), and established for it a certain temporal coherence within the modern age. More important, however, is Ross's emphasis on Women in Love as an international novel which shows that Lawrence "widened the cultural horizon of English fiction." Central to...