Paul Metcalfe
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Because of his frank and honest portrayal of human sexuality in the controversial works for which he is best known, e.g. "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and "Women in Love", D. H. Lawrence was not widely respected in his day. In fact at the time of his death, he was considered little more than a pornographer. However E. M. Forester challenged this portrayal calling Lawrence "The greatest imaginative novelist of our generation", and with his extended reflection...
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The first narrative in the collection is "The Prussian Officer", which tells of a Captain and his orderly. Having wasted his youth gambling, the captain has been left with only his military career, and though he has taken on mistresses throughout his life, he remains single. His young orderly is involved in a relationship with a young woman, and the captain, feeling sexual tension towards the young man, prevents the orderly from engaging in the relationship...
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I decided to write this book because of the need for an effective system of managing and enhancing people's ability to communicate. Its applications span business as well as personal interactions. It can be a simple way of assessing the personalities of people around you and enabling you to better interact with them. I've played the role of an employee in middle management as well as upper management. One essential skill for any good manager is communication....
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This is an introduction to The Tao of Human Interactions.
I decided to write this book because of the need for an effective system of managing and enhancing people's ability to communicate. Its applications span business as well as personal interactions. It can be a simple way of assessing the personalities of people around you and enabling you to better interact with them. I've played the role of an employee in middle management as well as upper...
6) Smile
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Smile' is one of Lawrence's shorter pieces, a thumbnail sketch of an idea. A man is relieved that his wife is dead and struggles to hide his relief when confronted with his wife's body. The relief breaks out in a smile which he struggles to excuse. How much better it would have been, Lawrence seems to be saying, if he had just laughed out loud!
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The Border Line' is unusual in that Lawrence dabbles in the supernatural (as he was to do again in 'The Rocking-Horse Winner' two years later) and that this is less a story in the traditional sense and more an exploration of the mind of a particular woman, based on his own wife, Frieda. Katherine, in the story, realises that her real love was her first husband whom she should, according to Lawrence, have submitted to to gain real happiness. As Lawrence...
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The Woman Who Rode Away' is a dark, troubling story set in the wilderness of South America. What makes this story compelling is that the woman is at the end of her personal tether and the Indians are at the end of their cultural one, they seek one another out for terrible but perhaps predictable uses. Each of them looks to the other for "salvation" in a way that expresses the desperation and futility of their situation.
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Two Blue Birds' tells the tale of the classic triangle of the man, the wife and the secretary, who struggle to work out what their relationships are with each other. Neither of the women seem to want the man sexually but the secretary offers devotion while the parasitic wife has more insight into the man and his work. All the relationships seem unhealthy, all three seem to want something different but are incapable of expressing what they desire.
10) Her Turn
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Her Turn' was written by D H Lawrence in 1912. Lawrence is at his best in this story, taken from the scenes of his childhood and based on characters he knew intimately. The scene can hardly be called a story in the traditional sense, being the altercation between a miner and his wife over the sharing of strike pay. Lawrence keeps the story light-hearted, almost comical but the tensions of married life in hard times are just below the surface.
11) The Undying Man
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The Undying Man' is a slight unfinished piece, drawing its inspiration from Shelley's 'Frankenstein' about the creation of life and the fear of death. It is interesting to speculate where Lawrence would have gone with the story but the sound of broken glass is the most likely ending.
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The Man Who Loved Islands is a haunting story of a man who tries to control his life by making his world ever smaller by moving to increasingly smaller islands. Each one proves to be beyond his ability to control either other people or his sexual desire and finally the last island conquers him. The story can even be seen as a metaphor of man's inexorable march to death when we are all finally alone.
13) The Old Adam
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The Old Adam' The story is set in lodgings in Croydon and the incident may again be autobiographical, but the story examines for the first time in Lawrence's writing, the different and conflicting loves between men and women.
14) In Love
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In Love' handles a serious subject in a light, almost comic way. A couple are engaged but have no sexual feelings for each other. The tensions, as they try to do what is expected of them, explode until a compromise is reached. But will the marriage last?
15) The Wilful Woman
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The Wilful Woman' was written by D H Lawrence in 1922. 'The Wilful Woman' remained unfinished and so the tough, spoiled, rich American woman, used to having her own way, does not get the nemesis Lawrence may have had in mind for her. Whether it was the Wordsworthian lessons of nature as she battles her way through the American wilderness or the harder lessons of a waiting husband who may or may not want her, we will never know.
16) Rex
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Rex' is a riotous story of the turmoil caused in a household by the arrival of a puppy. The setting is similar to the one found in 'Sons and Lovers’, but Lawrence thought this scene deserved the fuller treatment of a short story. The question of the destructive force of unconditional love is left open.
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Lessford's Rabbits was written by D H Lawrence in 1908. It was the second of his sixty-seven short stories, all of which will be published individually in audio format by the Blackthorn Press. The story is set in a local school and gives an insight into the poverty and spirit of working-class children as well as a glimpse of Lawrence's time as a teacher.
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The Man Who Was Through With the World' picks up the same themes as in Lawrence's short story 'The Man Who Loved Islands'. He asks if we can ever withdraw from the world, no matter how much it disgusts us. The ironic part of this fragment is that the hermit vainly seeks to think holy thoughts while all around him is the natural world which could provide his life with meaning. The fragment is unfinished leaving the reader to wonder if the hero would...
19) A Dream of Life
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A Dream of Life’ is unfinished but there is enough extant to let us know where Lawrence was going in this story. He begins by looking back and bemoaning what has become of his generation, under the thumb of women and lacking the spark of his father's mining friends. Then in a scene reminiscent of 'Pilgrim's Progress' he travels forward in time and sees his village in the distant future. The people are living in an idealized commune, but do they...
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For the first time, all of Lawrence's sixty-seven short stories are collected in a single volume. The settings range from the scenes of his Nottinghamshire boyhood and the mining community he grew up in, his teaching years and to the world of his travels from Australia to South America and Europe. But the stories always encompass the eternal in the particular.