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D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow rewards readers willing to move inward — into the psychological depths of a single family across three generations — rather than outward toward the conventional satisfactions of plot and incident. In this episode of The Big Book Project, host Lori Feathers is joined by novelist Mark Haber for a rich, searching conversation about one of Lawrence’s most extraordinary and, as both agree, somewhat underappreciated works.

The Rainbow traces the Brangwen family through the pressures of nationality and gender, the primal forces of love and sexual desire, and the slow, irreversible transformation of a world that once measured time by the seasons. Lori and Mark explore how Lawrence sustains narrative intensity across three generations using a remarkably tight circle of characters — no strangers arrive to upend the story, no dramatic external events intrude — relying instead on what Mark notes as the novel’s defining quality: its passionate psychological interiority.

The conversation moves through the novel’s most compelling terrain: the question of whether The Rainbow is, as some critics have charged, misogynistic, or whether Ursula Brangwen — the novel’s fierce, searching third-generation protagonist — represents someone genuinely radical for her era; the treatment of sexuality as a primal, deeply psychological force rather than mere titillation; the immigrant narrative embedded in Lydia’s Polish origins and what it contributes to the novel’s portrait of cultural difference; the role of religion and nature as competing — or perhaps complementary — forms of the sacred; and the tender, unusually intimate portraits of father-daughter relationships that mark the book as distinctly working-class in its emotional priorities.

Mark Haber also discusses his forthcoming novel, Ada and shares his current reading, including a deep immersion in Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo.

Mark Haber is the author of three novels, most recently Lesser Ruins, and an editor at Coffee House Press. His fourth novel, Ada, is forthcoming in July.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction & Welcome

00:17 Why The Rainbow? Mark’s Curveball Pick

02:10 The Brangwen Family & Tight Circle of Characters

05:09 Three Generations in Under 500 Pages

08:44 Sexuality and the Psychological Interior

12:09 Is The Rainbow Misogynistic? Female Agency in Anna and Ursula

17:35 Flux and Consistency: Lawrence’s Narrative Rhythm

22:09 Is It a Dark Book? Tone, Mood, and Hope

24:33 Overwriting, Purple Prose, and Literary Genius

28:08 Religion, Faith, and Nature as the Sacred

33:43 Lydia’s Polish Origins and the Immigrant Narrative

38:06 Passion, Nature, and Human Longing

39:28 Father-Daughter Relationships Across Generations

47:16 Mark Haber’s Forthcoming Novel Ada

49:39 Current Reading and What’s Coming Next