SOURCE: A review of Out of Sheer Rage, in Southern Humanities Review, Vol. 34, No. 2, Spring, 2000, pp. 181–84.

In the following review, Bolton finds Out of Sheer Rage “amusing and provocative,” but concludes that “those seeking a keener understanding of Lawrence will be disappointed.”

British novelist and freelance writer Geoff Dyer's entertaining book takes its title aptly from a phrase in D. H. Lawrence's correspondence regarding his Study of Thomas Hardy, lines which also serve as an epigraph to Dyer's study of Lawrence: “Out of sheer rage I've begun my book on Thomas Hardy. It will be about anything but Thomas Hardy I am afraid—queer stuff—but not bad.” Dyer's book [Out of Sheer Rage], likewise, begins and ends in a rage of sorts, is about anything but Lawrence, and is queer stuff, but not bad. It had long been Dyer's ambition, he tells his readers, to write a...