I also used to think DHL's poems sucked, but have slowly come around
to them over the last few years. Not all the way around, but part of
the way.
The words I find I want to use about the novels are words like
"neurotic" and "hysterical" - which is to say that the subject
position they issue from is not exactly conventionally masculine. That
may have been part of the appeal - DHL enacting a kind of crisis of
masculinity, a dehiscence, with something rather strange and different
pushing its way out. The fascism of Women in Love is so comically
unbalanced, it has to be a kind of out-of-control autoimmune response,
an allergic flare-up.
Dominic
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