Why the Novel Matters
The one bright book of life
Value literature that moves the whole person.
So Lawrence, as a novelist, feels superior to the saint, the scientist, the philosopher and the poet. They are masters of different bits of man alive, but they 'never get the whole hog'.
Books are not life; they are only vibrations in the air. But the novel is the one book that can make the whole man alive tremble. That is why he calls it 'the one bright book of life'.
Other books stir only one part of us: Plato stirs the ideal part; the Sermon on the Mount, the selfless spirit; the Ten Commandments, the 'old Adam', our older, earthly self.
The whole Bible, Homer and Shakespeare are the supreme old 'novels': they affect the whole person.
They make the whole tree tremble with new life, instead of pushing growth in one direction only, which leads to a dead end.
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