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"The intrusion of the egoistic element is a sure proof of intuitive uncertainty. No man who is sure by instinct and intuition brags, though he may fight tooth and nail for his beliefs." (p575) DHL certainly indicts himself with this quote. In Phoenix, he consistently wields tautology without once citing any inadequacy on his part. I understand a need for self-confidence as a professorial tool, but there needs to be at least an inkling of humility. Otherwise you come dangerously close to rewriting the Bible, or in his case �� a new taoism.

I was first drawn to DHL for his stand against censorship. Books like Sons and Lovers prove he thought differently about these things, at a time when to do so was dangerous. I think now that I should have read only Part III "Love, Sex, Men and Women" and put this book back on the shelf. Open-mindedness regarding profanity is his only truly progressive concept. Before this book, I thought I was seeing the tip of the iceberg of his vast genius. It turned out to be an 800-page thump against the hull. Though certain parts are worthy of biographical research, there's little else of real readable value here. This is the danger of posthumous publishing. I do, however, strongly recommend the article "Art and Morality" on p 521.

His superfluous repetition seems childish. DHL's is a signature style in prose poetry but not suited to nonfiction. He repeats his coined phrases without explaining them any better each time. Nothing's worse than when a reader loses his place on the page, sees the same phrase every few sentences, and is forced - none the wiser - to begin the page again. If his bon mots and redundancies are meant to be melodious, they don't succeed, or maybe have become anachronistic outside of the 20s.

I also find distasteful his way of attacking small inconsistencies in others' writings. His militant opinion is more than critique, he often uses his own theoretic dogma to attack an imagined dogma in others. Walt Whitman's democracy, Thomas Hardy's impotence, Galsworthy's sentimentality �� all come under attack from DHL's sprawling yet definitive ideologies. At times he shows insight, but his harping insistence always takes it too far. Soapboxes don't hold you up if you stomp them into the ground.

Phoenix is assembled smartly for the casual dabbler or reference keeper, but not for the immersive reader. His heaviest rants are full of overlapping and hasty analogies that boggle the mind. Particularly in the philosophical essays, he truly seems drunk with pedantry. Best examples of this are his "Education of the People" p 587 and "On Being Religious" p 724. His metaphors are not so much mixed as they are bestial.

The compiler Edward McDonald did well to finish the work with a few short fictions, which reminded me of how great DHL's fictional work is. All his blustering opinions and prescriptive pseudo-psychology aside, stories like the unfinished "The Flying Fish" are incredibly well written. I must remind myself that DHL may not have wanted most of this volume published.