Literature’s greatest DIYer has replaced his pen for a trowel…
Nothing makes D.H. Lawrence happier than homemaking. He’s high up in the Lobo mountains of New Mexico building a chimney for his cabin and retacking the roof. No wonder Geoff Dyer argued he was ‘perhaps the first great DIYer in English literature.’
But all of this hard graft comes with a consequence: ‘I don’t write when I slave building the house – my arms feel so heavy, like a navvy’s, though they look as thin as ever.’ But he’s also not writing because he’s become detached from society and instead is revelling in ‘the big, unbroken spaces round me.’
He embraces the simple life, writing: ‘The sun is setting, the pines are red, the Indians are just started drumming.’ This is as close to Arcadia as he will ever get.
These video essays are based on the letters of D.H. Lawrence one hundred years ago and are published monthly as part of the D.H. Lawrence Memory Theatre project.
To see previous Locating Lawrence videos from 1922, click here.
To see previous Locating Lawrence videos from 1923, click here.
To see previous Locating Lawrence videos from 1924, click here.
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