Lady Chatterley’s Lover: 90 Years On

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arts, banned, book, censored, Chatterley, classic novel, D.H. Lawrence, erotica, romance

“Ours is essentially a tragic age; and so we refuse to take it tragically.” So begins the greatest post-World War I novel ever written.

With the exception of perhaps Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by
D. H. Lawrence, is my favorite novel of all time. The final version, published in 1928, is a tale about the collapse of western civilization in microcosm; detailed in the adulterous love affair between the novel’s anti-heroine, Constance Chatterley, the wife of a war-crippled lord, and woodsman agrarian, Mellor. Upon its publication it was deemed pornography and censored. It was also Lawrence’s final novel (his body of work fell victim of government and public reprisal) to be widely available to the public. Within less than two years from its publication, he was dead at 44.

What Lawrence illustrated so tragically and beautifully, was the reality that after the Great War, Europe was devastated in a way few in the West can comprehend now. Today, television series abound in apocalyptic shows, feeding a public hungry for the twisted and surreal. After 1918, the twisted and surreal had become commonplace for women of European nations. They had seen one-fourth of their men slaughtered, and upon the return of those that survived, the scars of mechanized warfare were evident every day.

In England—which technically won the war; though nothing was truly won—the effects were contradictory, but it didn’t matter. The landed stock was decimated. The value system that constructed the British Empire since the days of Elizabeth I was finished. It is no surprise that the 1920s were the first decade of the modern era. There is only so much trauma that people can endure in such a short period. At some point, everything just gives. Particularly in light of the fact that the modern age, for all its devastation, was ironically improving life.

I have a theory: In the past life was a struggle, it was ugly and brutal…so we sought beauty. In the modern age, with an ever-increasing array of comforts, we seek ugliness. Lady Chatterley’s Lover defines this consummately, even with the multitude of contradictions that resulted from its release. Like most great writing, it is awash in irony and paradox. But such is life, and such is history.

In recent decades, Lady Chatterley’s Lover has undergone significant reevaluation. It took until the 50s for the novel to appear in England in its raw form. It was considered a great work of art, which it is, as well as great read.  But in the 90s feminist studies challenged this, mainly due to Constance’s finding redemption in sexual fulfillment with a man. This is ironic (again) because the point was that she was liberating herself from an order that destroyed itself though its own devices; the very order that feminists seek to undermine.

It may seem odd to reference a book a decade before its centennial. But I could be dead in a ten years’ time, and I feel compelled to say Lawrence was a genius, one of the most original artists in any age. He recognized the significance of the love between a man a woman, however scandalous. It is the essence of the world. We cannot endure without it. It is forever relevant. Particularly in a time when that relationship has not only fallen under inspection and attack, but some seek to destroy.

“Ours is essentially a tragic age; so we refuse to take it tragically.”

 

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Faith and Muscle: Rhythm Corps’ Common Ground

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80s rock, album, arts, classic album, great albums, Music, Rhythm Corps, rock music

 

Timing is the essence of luck. Without the former you don’t have the latter. If the poet Robert Graves knew anything, he understood that the muse can be cruel and indifferent, building her nest from the entrails of poets. And such is the marketplace.

30 years ago, in 1988, the rock band Rhythm Corps released a seminal album of that decade, Common Ground. Today it is almost completely forgotten. This is unfortunate because it is a true gem. I remember discovering the group watching their video for the single, “Common Ground” on MTV’s program, 120 Minutes. Though I had no money at all, I scraped together $7.99 in change, went out and purchased the cassette. It was well worth the mining. In fact, Common Ground the album is one of the most solid recordings of the last 30 years. Not only are there no filler tracks, but every song is a masterpiece. It is also an album full of “Faith and Muscle” (the title of a track on side two).

Topic-wise Rhythm Corps scarcely deviated from issues previously addressed by such artists as U2, Peter Gabriel, and The Alarm—the solidarity movement in Poland; the futility of war and its hideous collateral effects; sublime spiritualty. It didn’t matter if they were repeating others, the songs were that freakin’ good!

At that point in my life I was a machine, lifting weights religiously and jogging some thirty miles a week. Common Ground became my fuel. With songs like, “I Surrender” and “Perfect Treason” (the latter a tune about the perversity of our judicial system) it wasn’t hard to go heavier on the dumbbells or push it another few miles.

Rhythm Corps hailed from Detroit, and their musical coalescence coincided with the beginning of the end of Motor City. Corporate greed and union corruption had started to reveal their mutual decrepitude. Out of this disease, Rhythm Corps harnessed, if not an original lyrical message, a sound that was all their own and something of portent of things to come. But for all its power out of the gate, the steed of righteousness would be undercut by the muddy bog of the market. By the end of the eighties, it was all really over where the music industry was concerned. The energies that fueled the creative explosion of the previous thirty years were being gobbled up by the multi-national coat and ties. Successful independent labels had been bought out. Most were shut down and those that survived saw their catalogs cleansed  (these are the same assholes who told Johnny Cash to get out of town, just saying).

When the grunge revolution hit in the early nineties, Rhythm Corps were but a speck of dust on the hooves of the stampeding present trend. But it was interesting, when first listened to Pearl Jam, I heard something familiar in Eddie Vedder’s voice. What was it? Then it dawned on me…Vedder sounded a lot like Michael Persh, the lead singer of Rhythm Corps! The similarities were uncanny and a little sad.

Grunge couldn’t survive the track in which it was forced to race on—the absolute corporatization of the music business. In fact I believe it aided in killing a handful of associated artists. Mammon always wins. Art, if it happens at all, is an accident. Grunge was the elegy to rock and roll, and against its will. The shame was that Rhythm Corps did not share even a verse over rock’s solemn, defiled grave.

A few years ago I sought out Common Ground. I hadn’t heard it in years. All I can say is, the day I refreshed my musical memory with it…that was a damn good day.

We live in a disposal society, this includes any creative endeavor. The album is all but dead and songs today have less value than a section of toilet paper. Rhythm Corps were a tragic anomaly—both ahead of and behind the times.

30 years ago, in 1988, the rock band Rhythm Corps released a seminal album of that decade, Common Ground. Today it is almost completely forgotten.

But it shouldn’t be.

Today, I’m a wreck. After a decade of fighting the ‘good’ fight, if the state of Texas required from its operatives a physical, I’d be put out to pasture. But if I could just somehow catch a whiff of the muse’s nest in the examining room, I just might rise to the occasion with a full bloom of faith and muscle.

 

Read more by Matt Minor!