Lawrence and Travel Literature

82 Howard, to his credit, does not offer any overly ingenious extrapolations to prove his thesis. Like von Wright, Habermas recognizes objectively verifiable knowledge in the physical sciences. Unlike him, however, not to mention Winch, Habermas admits the possiblity of objectivity in the human sciences. Habermas's rather unyielding criticism of Gadamer has been widely publicized. Howard suggests a single commonality between the two—the intention to wed theory and praxis in their thought (a project less fully realized, according to Howard, in the case of Habermas). Howard's chapter on Gadamer does advance his thesis of partial agreement . While competent, his reading of Gadamer does, in any case, appear to add little new to what is a major focus of current attention. In frequently contrasting "Continental" to "Anglo-Saxon" thought, Howard sometimes implies greater mutual sympathy between Gadamer and Habermas than his readings can support. Although admitting his importance, the author makes only passing reference to Ricoeur who has done perhaps the most in hermeneutics to collapse what are for him rather shop-worn distinctions: method versus truth, explanation versus understanding. Some of Ricoeur's recent essays are proof of his genial capacity to synthesize effectively seemingly irreconcilable points of view into more holistic perspectives. Howard's study would have benefitted from a more painstaking consideration of this fine syncretic mind. The author's readings of Habermas and Gadamer are considered if unprovocative . The book's major contribution lies elsewhere, however, namely in Its exposition of two important thinkers of the Anglo-Saxon tradition. The serious student of interpretation theory and of the Geisteswissenschaften in general will find his integration of the later Wittgenstein, of von Wright, and of Peter Winch into the discussion to be a substantial contribution to scholarship and instigative of further study. Jerry A. Varsava Vanderbilt University 9. LAWRENCE AND TRAVEL LITERATURE Bill T. Tracy, D. H. Lawrence and the Literature of Travel. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1983. $34.95 This book, one of a series designed to bring the better dissertations to the attention of all scholars, addresses the laudable task of helping "Lawrence 's travel books achieve the recognition they deserve" (p. 5). For a foundation Tracy fits Lawrence smoothly into the pattern of British travel writing during the last couple of centuries. But when he comes to the examination of specific works, his arguments are plagued by serious flaws from beginning to end. One arises in isolating the four travel books—Twilight In Italy, Sea and Sardinia, Mornings in Mexico, and Etruscan Places—from the rest of Lawrence writings. Tracy's reason for doing so is defensible: he wishes to overcome the general perception that the travel books belong to a "sub-literary mode" (p. 130). But then what he attempts to maintain does not respond to separate consideration of the travel works: that "Lawrence's travel books often surpass the fiction" (p. 129), that "by its very nature the travel genre is better suited than fiction to handle explorations of earlier forms of consciousness" (p. 129). So large a claim, and one so uncommon besides, requires the support of comparative analysis, which Tracy has declined to pursue. When he does go so far, now and then, as to recognize the pertinence of parallel analysis, the effect is only to emphasize the need 83 for what he is not doing. He says, for instance, that "after 1913 no firm distinction can be made between Lawrence's travel and didactic writings" (p. 20), and in reference to the journeys in the novels that they make difficult "a rigid division between fiction and travels" (p. 130). If Tracy had explored further in the direction intimated by these assertions, he could hardly have been led to adopt a position like that of Aldous Huxley, which now seems out of date: that Lawrence traveled in expectation of finding one day a place and a people he could belong to—a "male civilization"—that Twilight in Italy, Sea and Sardinia and Mornings In Mexico record the progress of his disillusionment, and that he finally pushed on from actual to spiritual search, embodying his finally successful quest in his last travel book Etruscan Places. Lawrence's...