T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 381

To James Hanley, 21.8. 51. Plymouth 21. VIII. 51. Dear Hanley Lately in London in one day I re-read the new book right through. Its writing is white-hot and terrific, but as a whole the work it has not the force of BoY. For one thing, the sea work it has not been a raid-servant in Liverpool; I suppose, you have never been a raid-servant in Liverpool; nor, I gather, was the village-fisherman life of the first pages yours. At least I did not feel (except by fits and pages) that the strangeness of the Moynihan family on which you seemed to lay stress, in the book, into rather overstartingly laid stress, to carry the picture interestingly drawn, a their priest both father & mother marvelably drawn: is missing in the magnificent but the imvivable charm. I think, too, the disaster of being ... out; I think it over-did; the disaster of being seduced; I could bear it with some fortitude, perhaps, if I think in correct the proportion in which she inhabits our minds. Shella meets two ...sts - one rapes her. The reeds too has-sculptors - both have a shot at it. More honestly, you owe to the labory of bus-conductors. A decent wearied cynical and rather hard-cenpered class of men. A so the fi al coincidence, though perhaps the only way of tying a book were so nigh, is rather a coincidence, isnt it? The quib le that the priest's performance on the cross might be is usually difficult you could rebut, because I think only by report. Are you laughing now? I doubt it! yet you will find that others be hes me will take refuge in laughter against your over-load of terror. I think the book is soared too high: It is s sting: in- nious! unusual; and carries itself off. I do not think any old, but you self could have conceived it, or would have sto-spted it, or could have written it, as I was n-fumed while I read it: but it is an criticism, surely, that I kept on crying out "NO, no" to myself; even while I reads. You bold me; but did not carry me away: and the only justificatic for extravagance is that it should be wholly successful. I'll tell you the part of the book I shall never forget; (and! aroused out ) must struck me as perhaps the finest scene (bar the man & wife in the last voyage) of all