Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1950 (originally published 1923) ISBN 0140007512
Hmmm. It's been a very long time since I've read any Lawrence, and time has not done him any favours, especially in this, one of his minor novels. The product of his short stay in Australia, Kangaroo is a bit of a mish-mash: part polemic, part philosophy, part thriller, part nature-novel, it shows the rapidity of it's writing too evidently in too many places to be a classic.
There is a strong autobiographical core to this novel. The main character, Richard Lovat Somers, is clearly based on Lawrence himself - a writer, son of a worker, married to a German. The story of Somers' experiences in World War One mirror those of Lawrence, and the reader can easily assume that many of Somers' opinions reflect those of the writer as well.
And there is much opinion and commentary in Kangaroo. Thoughts on democracy, the state of man, and of Gods. He uses the story of Kangaroo, Jack and Jaz (who together bring him into the shady world of the Digger's Clubs, a kind of New Guard) to espouse his philosophies of a natural aristocracy in man, the hollowness and failure of democracy, and the need for man to re-connect with the "ancient Gods".
There is much discussion of the various urges that beset man, and how democracy and socialism are not the answer. Somers is attracted to the idea of Kangaroo and his Diggers taking over the country, as he feels that the strong leader is the answer to Government. What Somers can't accept is that Kangaroo preaches a universal love of and for man, which Somers knows is not how a society can be run.
Torn between his own thoughts and those of Kangaroo, Somers does what he always has done and retreats into himself rather than go with the group, knowing that he can't commit to any movement, even one with aims that he may agree with.
This is certainly a novel of its time, in that Somers, Kangaroo, and Struthers (the socialist union leader) are searching for new ways to order society, after the War exposed the failings of the system that had existed up to then. Much of Somers' spoutings on human nature however are half-formed and hopeful (and to the reader of today, can be hard going). It would have been fascinating to see how Lawrence's thought may have developed and changed had he lived to see the destruction wrought by the strong men of both the Left and the Right throughout the Thirties and Forties.
Not a character in the novel, but a major part nonetheless, is the country itself - Australia. Lawrence writes of Australia as only one who is foreign to it can. He seems innately aware if its great age, and that white man was a mere pinprick on something much more ancient. His descriptions of the countryside veer between awe at its beauty, and terror at it's strangeness. As with most who come from the Northern realms, the colour and clarity of the sky is particularly noted.
The Australian people he finds less agreeable. Through the character of Somers, he struggles with the freedom they have. The idea that each man was as good as the next repulses him in a way, even though that is what he believes in. The easy familiarity that Australians have with each other seems to him to be in some way a fake. He who was so conscious of class, struggles with the apparent class-less nature of Australian society, while at the same time knowing full-well that money-capitalism was as rife here as anywhere else.
To this reader, Kangaroo is three or four novels in one, each one fighting for supremacy and none of them winning the battle. I was left a little bereft, not knowing what to think as the covers closed. Not the place to start with Lawrence, this is a little time-capsule of a book that is hard to love.
Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell
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