Lawrence Durrell's major novels

by Donald P. Kaczvinsky

This book provides a thematic reading of all of Lawrence Durrell's major novels, while also considering Durrell's incorporation of other art forms - especially painting, architecture, and horticulture - to structure his fiction. Building on insights found in Durrell's travel essays and the psychoanalytic theories of Georg Groddeck, a contemporary of Freud whom Durrell admired and promoted, author Donald P. Kaczvinsky suggests that the artist-heroes of the major novels will be exposed to a place and a culture that is debilitating, unhealthy, and diseased. The Black Book, Durrell's first major novel, is a "black romance." Lawrence Lucifer is on a quest, whose success depends on his ability to reject the spiritual and material comforts of a medieval English culture and accept the pagan world of Greece. Of particular importance is an extended consideration, in chapter 3, of Durrell's best-known series, The Alexandria Quartet. Taking their cue from Durrell's "Note" to Balthazar, most critic