On T.E. Lawrence
May. 31st, 2004 01:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petronia(I'm trying to make the subject line more descriptive, for archival purposes. -_-)
I'm reading Seven Pillars of Wisdom as well - have been doing so for a week, rather, though I'm less than a quarter of the way through. Mr. Why-spell-Arabic-words-consistently-in-English has wonderfully lucid prose, but that doesn't make it an easy read. A compelling one, yes. As it is I'm outstripping my ability to keep track of who's-who in pursuit of the narrative. (The maps at the beginning of the book exist for the towns and landmarks, and every once in a while one recognises a name made familiar by the news, with a start. Both sororial unit and I have been getting a bit into Middle Eastern history, distant and near; I'm driven by current affairs (I don't talk about it actively on lj, it's my fun space, but if you're one of the people who blog links about the war or ME politics I probably follow all of them), and she of course comes to it via Spain. It's funny, because she has to write the occasional reflection-piece on the contributions of Islam to world thought, so I promised her philosphers but really what do I know? Barely a few names. Avicenne, Averroès... actually, you can tell that this dates back to some high school class by the fact that they don't roll off the tongue in English. I'd bet anything it was a science course and not humanities. ^^; I also got her this novel I read for high school French, La Sablière, a mostly-coming-of-age story revolving around a teenager who runs a sort of two-man LARP for himself and his mentally disabled younger brother during summer vacation. He bases it on an encyclopedic history of the Crusades he's reading as he goes along; the catch is that he made the Arabs the heroes based on the conviction that they were going to win, as their civilisation was in every way superior. Of course it all ends rather badly for the cause of imagination, as Bildungsroman tends to do.)
Back to Lawrence, anyway - it's one of those books that are odd to read, because the voice rises right off the page, and rather than judge the book one feels rather as if one is judging the man. He was a hater of Biblical proportions, one can tell. ^^; What that word means in the most general sense, I've come to figure, is someone who can't let things slide past them without giving a damn (and thus the haters I know tend to be the ones to perform acts of charity or far-flung caring or idealism, while all the time being alarmingly abrasive, or just plain getting ticked at things that draw a shrug from me at best). So Lawrence makes unsparing summations of others (more categorically than individually, which is also a prime hater-trait), and describes himself as... prey to the most amazing double-think, when you get down to it, in that fine lucid prose all dripping with irony. It's also very apparent that - I can't put this properly but - he didn't write this so I can get a good read out of it, or even a better understanding of Middle Eastern history. It's a bucket of cold water to feel this so clearly from the text. ^^; Add to this the fact that the books I'm most comfortable with are library-games constructed by a decidedly detached authorial voice for erudite amusement. So the armchair strategist-cuddler is happy just following the account of the campaign, but the armchair general reader is edgy. Not that edgyness is really terrible, and in fact may be salutary.
I should really find a third-party biography or something so I can put the book in context (other than the movie for cripes' sake, I mean >_>), but I can't help thinking that it's a bad thing that I can't read a book nowadays without a biography of the author to go along with it, or else I get twitchy? (OTOH my sister and I can't seem to read into the Greco-Roman without coming across T.E.L. in the Acknowledgements section either, so...)
I'm reading Seven Pillars of Wisdom as well - have been doing so for a week, rather, though I'm less than a quarter of the way through. Mr. Why-spell-Arabic-words-consistently-in-English has wonderfully lucid prose, but that doesn't make it an easy read. A compelling one, yes. As it is I'm outstripping my ability to keep track of who's-who in pursuit of the narrative. (The maps at the beginning of the book exist for the towns and landmarks, and every once in a while one recognises a name made familiar by the news, with a start. Both sororial unit and I have been getting a bit into Middle Eastern history, distant and near; I'm driven by current affairs (I don't talk about it actively on lj, it's my fun space, but if you're one of the people who blog links about the war or ME politics I probably follow all of them), and she of course comes to it via Spain. It's funny, because she has to write the occasional reflection-piece on the contributions of Islam to world thought, so I promised her philosphers but really what do I know? Barely a few names. Avicenne, Averroès... actually, you can tell that this dates back to some high school class by the fact that they don't roll off the tongue in English. I'd bet anything it was a science course and not humanities. ^^; I also got her this novel I read for high school French, La Sablière, a mostly-coming-of-age story revolving around a teenager who runs a sort of two-man LARP for himself and his mentally disabled younger brother during summer vacation. He bases it on an encyclopedic history of the Crusades he's reading as he goes along; the catch is that he made the Arabs the heroes based on the conviction that they were going to win, as their civilisation was in every way superior. Of course it all ends rather badly for the cause of imagination, as Bildungsroman tends to do.)
Back to Lawrence, anyway - it's one of those books that are odd to read, because the voice rises right off the page, and rather than judge the book one feels rather as if one is judging the man. He was a hater of Biblical proportions, one can tell. ^^; What that word means in the most general sense, I've come to figure, is someone who can't let things slide past them without giving a damn (and thus the haters I know tend to be the ones to perform acts of charity or far-flung caring or idealism, while all the time being alarmingly abrasive, or just plain getting ticked at things that draw a shrug from me at best). So Lawrence makes unsparing summations of others (more categorically than individually, which is also a prime hater-trait), and describes himself as... prey to the most amazing double-think, when you get down to it, in that fine lucid prose all dripping with irony. It's also very apparent that - I can't put this properly but - he didn't write this so I can get a good read out of it, or even a better understanding of Middle Eastern history. It's a bucket of cold water to feel this so clearly from the text. ^^; Add to this the fact that the books I'm most comfortable with are library-games constructed by a decidedly detached authorial voice for erudite amusement. So the armchair strategist-cuddler is happy just following the account of the campaign, but the armchair general reader is edgy. Not that edgyness is really terrible, and in fact may be salutary.
I should really find a third-party biography or something so I can put the book in context (other than the movie for cripes' sake, I mean >_>), but I can't help thinking that it's a bad thing that I can't read a book nowadays without a biography of the author to go along with it, or else I get twitchy? (OTOH my sister and I can't seem to read into the Greco-Roman without coming across T.E.L. in the Acknowledgements section either, so...)
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no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 02:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 07:21 am (UTC)Odd duck, really. Before WWI he was an archaeologist, and after WWI he, like, beta-read I, Claudius.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 06:12 pm (UTC)Lawrence in Context
Date: 2004-05-31 03:13 am (UTC)Re: Lawrence in Context
Date: 2004-05-31 07:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 03:18 am (UTC)My Modern Middle East lecturer touched on Lawrence once or twice in passing. What I've studied of him was in the context of the Sykes-Picot treaty, which admittedly doesn't exactly put him in the best of light.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 07:26 am (UTC)But yeah. Time to indulge in a bout of nose-following research. I might even check out McGill's library, actually.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 08:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 06:22 am (UTC)If you're looking for Lawrence biographies, you should definitely check out "A Prince Of Our Disorder", by John Mack. It's extremely well-researched and readable (John Mack got a Pulitzer for this book, if I'm not mistaken), and provides a fascinating psychological portrait of Lawrence. Also, whatever you do, stay away from the Asher biography. The man was a complete quack.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 07:55 am (UTC)Pulitzer, eh? That sounds worth it in and of itself. *g*
no subject
Date: 2004-05-31 03:34 pm (UTC)