"California is a queer place in a way, it has turned its back on the world, and looks into the void Pacific. It is absolutely selfish, very empty, but not false, and at least, not full of false effort"
About this Quote
Lawrence writes about California the way a suspicious lover sizes up a new romance: magnetic, self-absorbed, and weirdly honest about it. Calling it "queer" isn’t just a period flourish; it signals a place that doesn’t behave according to Old World social physics. California, in his framing, has committed a geographic and moral pivot: it has "turned its back on the world" (Europe, history, inherited manners) and stares into the "void Pacific", an ocean rendered less as a body of water than as an existential blank page.
The intent is double-edged. He’s indicting California for "selfish" emptiness, a culture of appetite without tradition, but he’s also admiring its refusal to perform. That last clause is the tell: "not false" and "not full of false effort". Lawrence, allergic to bourgeois striving and moral posturing, hears in California a kind of brutal sincerity. The place may be hollow, he implies, but at least it isn’t stuffed with inherited lies.
Context matters: Lawrence arrives in the 1920s, after World War I has scorched European confidence and as Southern California is selling sunshine, reinvention, and spiritual novelty. His line catches that emerging American myth before it becomes fully Hollywood-processed: the frontier turned inward, the edge of the map turning into a psychological stance. The subtext is that emptiness can be either vacancy or freedom. California’s "void" is terrifying because it lacks meaning, seductive because it lets you invent one without apology.
The intent is double-edged. He’s indicting California for "selfish" emptiness, a culture of appetite without tradition, but he’s also admiring its refusal to perform. That last clause is the tell: "not false" and "not full of false effort". Lawrence, allergic to bourgeois striving and moral posturing, hears in California a kind of brutal sincerity. The place may be hollow, he implies, but at least it isn’t stuffed with inherited lies.
Context matters: Lawrence arrives in the 1920s, after World War I has scorched European confidence and as Southern California is selling sunshine, reinvention, and spiritual novelty. His line catches that emerging American myth before it becomes fully Hollywood-processed: the frontier turned inward, the edge of the map turning into a psychological stance. The subtext is that emptiness can be either vacancy or freedom. California’s "void" is terrifying because it lacks meaning, seductive because it lets you invent one without apology.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ocean & Sea |
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