I've decided a good technique is to put myself in the era in which the novel was written because modern mentality tends to precipitate an unfulfilled experience. This happened right away when I cracked the first pages of "Chatterley". The book seemed hokey and cliched. I recall seeing a shelf full of Harlequin romance novels at my Grandmother's house when I was a kid. The writers (mostly women) used terms like: throbbing member, hot virile shaft, achieved a climatic eruption. And, I was like... Wow! This is really lame! This novel was definitely the precursor to all Harlequin romance novels. BUT, the writing is superb and besides the "sex" scenes and some contrived content it is a pretty good story so far. If I can get over a description like this (I have to detach myself from 2009 and go back to the 1920's when nobody really was writing material like this) then I'll be okay.
"Connie found it impossible to come to her crisis before he had really finished his. And he roused a certain craving passion in her, with his little boy's nakedness and softness, she had to go on after he had finished, in the wild tumult and heaving of her loins, while he heroically kept himself up, and present in her, with all his will and self-offering, till she brought about her own crisis, with weird little cries."
See what I'm saying?
Oddly enough Lawrence uses these kinds descriptions, but then busts out with a couple of F-BOMBS by page 35, way before "The Catcher In The Rye". It leaves me asking why the squishy, squirrely loin talk?
The main character is of course Lady Chatterley and unfortunately for her, her husband was paralyzed in the WWI. I say unfortunate for her, because Lawrence describes him as someone who really didn't care about sex when he still had the ability to do it. Thus far in the novel, he doesn't seem too distraught over his condition, which of course is extremely peculiar. So, as one may guess, the book is about Lady Chatterley trying to "get her freak on"! Yes, I did just bust out with that expression!
HAVE A GOOD VOCABULARY!
Words in the first few chapters:
bucolic
supercilious
tremulous
simulacrum
laconically
Words Used Over and Over AND OVER:
loins, loins and more loins
crisis (huh? figure that one out!)
bitch goddess
nakedness
erect
1 comment:
"Connie found it impossible to come to her crisis before he had really finished his. And he roused a certain craving passion in her, with his little boy's nakedness and softness, she had to go on after he had finished, in the wild tumult and heaving of her loins, while he heroically kept himself up, and present in her, with all his will and self-offering, till she brought about her own crisis, with weird little cries."
Umm, I think I want to read it now. Seriously.
"Little death" "climax" even "little earthquakes." But I've never heard it referred to as "crisis."
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