Lawrence and the Indian
Apprehending ‘Culture’ in the American Southwest
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20072389 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Judith Ruderman (Duke University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Pages | 89-123 |
| Publication date | 2014-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Race and Identity in D. H. Lawrence (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan UK (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1057/9781137398833_5 |
| OpenAlex | W2499981822 |
| ISBN | 9781137398833 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 9 |
Back in London after his first stay in New Mexico, Lawrence took several friends to see a 1923 Hollywood western, The Covered Wagon, which included about a thousand American Indians in the cast. Dorothy Brett remembered how Lawrence sat ‘tense with excitement’ as he watched, and how Kot, Middleton Murry, Gertler, and she were all ‘infected by [his] love for the West’.1 That Lawrence, who died in France, was eventually buried in Taos, New Mexico, rather than in his family plot in Eastwood or somewhere in Europe, suggests the appropriateness of his final and permanent home in the West.2 Of course, because of his skepticism about people and places, it cannot be said of Lawrence that he ever found his Rananim there. Certainly he was averse to much about American culture: as he sneered in September 1924, in his essay ‘Climbing Down Pisgah’ (written on the ranch that now houses his ashes), ‘Pisgah’s a fraud, and the Promised Land is Pittsburgh. . . and Canaan smells of kerosene’ (RDP 226). However, Lawrence found a dif- ferent version of America, an antidote to its industrialism and commer- cialism, in the pueblo Indians of the American Southwest. Whereas the writings of his Australian sojourn either ignore the aboriginal popula- tion (Kangaroo) or refer sparingly to it (The Boy in the Bush), his writings of the American period foreground native peoples. Their America held for Lawrence the promise of ‘coming home’
American literature · American west · Art · Art history · Culture of the United States · Ethnology · Genealogy · Hollywood · Literature · Native american · Skepticism · Theology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights · Philosophy
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |