Featured Lit Spit
by Arthur Hailey
...to my brain thanks for being my sink to soak
and remove stains replace pain and point the blame
from blacked out blanks i've allowed to wane and
wash away with the rain your bank account is full
of attention and I was well paid off with an agreement
on position to war is evil people are stupid and
syllabize has a definition you were a synonym
to perfection... |
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The Lab of D.H. Lawrence
by Serban Brebenel
It was as if his usage of the various scenarios
and characters in his stories allowed him to toy
with the ‘what ifs’ within his socially
restrictive world. If real life did not allow
him to experiment with variables, and to witness
the outcome of different hypothesis testing, then
a novel could serve as a great laboratory.
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Women
in Love
A Review of the Novel by D. H. Lawrence
by Serban Brebenel
The two men, Gerald and Birkin--at first glance,
they seem rather ‘gay’. Consider
the scene where they get drunk and decide
to wrestle…then decide that wrestling
naked would much better do the trick. Afterwards,
they fall asleep in each others arms. I know
what most have gotten or will get from that
scene, but what did I see?
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Regional
Highlight:
by Dasan
Ahanu
A 6'7" Black male in strolls along Hillsborough
Street effortlessly blending into the backdrop.
With his tall slender frame, one could casually
receive him as an NCSU basketball player,
out for lunch between classes. Only a non-receptive
stranger would stock such a clumsy association.
A sincere look at him, and you know right
away-that this is no baller. This is a poet.
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“The
tragedy is when you’ve got sex in the
head instead of down where it belongs.”
-D.H.Lawrence
Hard to believe this was said by someone who
has written books about sexual tensions and
relations. Or by someone whose doctrines of
sexual freedom spawned obscenity trials. And
whose sections of books were banned in Great
Britain and the U.S. Apparently, however,
it seems D. H. Lawrence did in fact speak
such words; the ironic factor being that the
defining mark of his works was the frankness
in which he described relations between men
and women, both ‘real’ and fictional,
in his poetry and novels.
Lawrence’s
characters and events carried a close connection
to the people and events of his own life.
Born in 1885, in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire,
as the son of a drunken coal miner (who
abused his wife), Lawrence found himself
hating his father and admitted having a
deep personal bond with his mother. Nothing
short here of an Oedipal complex--perhaps
pushed a little over the limit. He helped
his mother to die in 1910 by giving her
an overdose of sleeping medicine. He recreated
his mother, as well as a haunting euthanasia
scene in Sons and Lovers. In Women in Love,
there are two couples that are rumored to
actually be Lawrence and his wife, and their
friends John and Katherine Murray. The two
couples shared a house in England between
1914 and 1915.
It
seems obvious that Lawrence, as most writers,
represents through his novels, both characters
and situations which he was well confronted
with in life. And yes, one can note the
obvious abundance of sexual relations in
his works. Yet there is something else in
his works that stirs my fascination. His
novels seemed to have been a way for him
to analyze the happenings of his real life.
It was as if his usage of the various scenarios
and characters in his stories allowed him
to toy with the ‘what ifs’ within
his socially restrictive world. If real
life did not allow him to experiment with
variables, and to witness the outcome of
different hypothesis testing, then a novel
could serve as a great laboratory. Characters
could run free. They could have mutated
mind states. They could be forced in and
out of the laws of nature. Or simply put,
they could have all kinds of strange beliefs
and actions.
I
see Lawrence as one of the great empirical
scientists. The society in which he lived
in did not give him a chance to talk about
sex. Society closed its ears on ‘obscene’
words. Yet, through his books, nothing could
stop him from using whatever words he chose
or exploring sexuality in general. Literally,
he could play anything in the books.
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