PARTISAN REVIEW
241
darkness." (Further discussion here of this vast antinomy - con–
sciousness of one's unconsciousness - in our lives rather than our
novels, would be out of place. But I predicate the distinction of
selves in both fiction and reality. For those who remain uncon–
vinced, for those who assert the nonexistence of any "other"
self,
the experience of reading Lawrence must be uniquely unple--.,.sant,
like drifting accidentally into somebody else's bad dream. )
It is evident that the special energy of modern fiction derives
from its treatment of the self. Focusing microscopically on the p:,yche
and its nuances, James, Lawrence, Joyce - the three great masters–
each modified the novel's resources for its display. By technical means,
each expanded the resources for portraying character that had dom–
inated nineteenth-century fiction. But while we know a great deal
about the new methods of James and the new methods of Joyce, we
have not yet come to terrns with Lawrence's. What I want to point
out here is that what Lawrence essentially contributed to the novel
was a methodical quest. With method, he changed not this or that
in
fiction; he changed fiction. He made the novel give more Ulan it
could
give, that
is
to say he made it transcend the generic conditions
of its form by pushing it down, out of character and out of
this
world. There was madness in that. And Lawrence's madness, rather
than
his
method, continues to characterize and continues to redeem
the modern novel. Earlier than Joyce, Proust, Gide,
Kafka
and
Mann, what Lawrence did to fiction was to initiate in the form of
the novel the impossible quest that has become its binding, under–
lying condition: inexhaustible precisely because it is a lust after the
impossible notation, the bottomless subbasement.
Now it is a truism that Lawrence and Joyce, however wildly
at variance from each other, together form the English vanguard
of the fiction we call modern. But while everyone who can read
Joyce can understand what Joyce
did
to the novel - like it or
not - Lawrence's important innovations - perhaps because they are
by now far more standard, more influential .and pervasive through–
out modern fiction - still have to be pointed out. The no-holds–
barred spontarieity of the author's personal involvement in
his
own
novel; the crucial framework of symbolic scenes overshadowing
his
plot; the explicit tying-in of the degree of his characters' sexual ful–
fillment with virtually everything else in the novel: each of these
