 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
The Book of Laurence - 19 -
- 19 -
“Who is Larry?” incessantly and found no peace.
39
Lawrence
Bragg
40
seemed plausible
briefly as did Lawrence Lessig.
Less briefly I fancied Lawrence Durrell, author of the
Alexandria Quartet.
I tried going cold turkey and re-read most of Prophets and
too much of the
Bhagavad-Gita.
But every so often my Larry
would say something so reasonable and yet a-tinge-inspiring
that I would restart my hunt.
Perhaps Larry’s last name, not first, was Lawrence
and he
was the explorer (T.E.) of Arabia, or the author (D.H.) of
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
41 42
and Sons and Lovers.
43
Perhaps she
was Sarah Bates Lawrence after whom the fine American
liberal-arts College is named.
Could he be
Ernest (E.O.)
39
I found 38 meanings for Lawrence’s at Dictionary.com, including the actress Gertrude
and four for Laurence.
40
(Sir William) Lawrence Bragg (1890–1971) was the Australian physicist who shared the
Nobel Prize in Physics in 1915 with his father Sir William Henry for the development of
x-ray crystallography. Bragg was director of the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge when
the structure of DNA was discovered.
41
Written in 1928, it used the word ‘fuck’ and as such it was only published in English in
1960 and then banned briefly until found guilty of literary merit! The verdict was soon to
be immortalized in Tom Lehrer’s 1965 song, Smut.
42
Phillip Larkin’s poem "Annus Mirabilis" begins with a reference to the trial:
Sexual intercourse began
(which was rather late for me)
-Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban
43
"Mrs Morel always said the after-life would hold nothing in store for her husband: he rose from
the lower world into purgatory, when he came home from pit, and passed into heaven in the
Palmerston Arms." From Sons and Lovers (edited out of the 1913 edition, restored in 1992).
 |