From the Old World to the New: Transitions from Lorenzo in Taos to Rachel Cusk’s Second Place
In her introduction to D. H. Lawrence’s novel The Rainbow, Rachel Cusk claims that it ‘offers an account of how the old world became the new’. The same might be said of her 2021 novel Second Place, which reworks Mabel Dodge Luhan’s Lorenzo in Taos (1932), an account of her encounter with Lawrence in...
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| Publicat a: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ebc, |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Idioma: | Anglais |
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Études britanniques contemporaines
2026
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| Accés en línia: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Sumari: | In her introduction to D. H. Lawrence’s novel The Rainbow, Rachel Cusk claims that it ‘offers an account of how the old world became the new’. The same might be said of her 2021 novel Second Place, which reworks Mabel Dodge Luhan’s Lorenzo in Taos (1932), an account of her encounter with Lawrence in New Mexico, with Cusk transposing it instead to a marshy coast land in modern day England, and replacing the famous writer Lawrence with the narcissistic painter L. The many similarities between the older book and the new (the names Brett and Tony, Tony’s seemingly Indian roots, the car journey, the claim that L. wishes to destroy M., the role played by M’s will) all serve to underscore the idea that a transition from an old world to a new, is at play here. As well as Luhan’s memoirs, Cusk’s novel also draws on Lawrence’s ideas (on conquest, on freedom, on the eternal), imparting a particularly personal and modern spin to the narrative. |
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