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.A Room with a View (Penguin Classics)

by: E.M. Forster, Malcolm Bradbury

August 31, 2006
It's very simple really. I work all day in an office as part of a modern globalised monoculture.

And then on the way home I read A Room with a View and reacquaint myself with everything that's true.

Books like this are treasured friends.
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.Howards End (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

by: E.M. Forster, David Lodge

April 27, 2006
This was perhaps my first real introduction to literature, apart from "1984", the inevitable smart-schoolboy read, and "Sons And Lovers". As such it was a revelation - Forster's empathy, subtlety, lyricism and chracterisation are magnificent, while being oddly inobtrusive. There are no verbal pyrotechnics as you might find in DH Lawrence or Virginia Woolf, but a deeper vision of life that was wonderful to encounter at 15.

Forster's writing trajectory had led him to be able to write a "condition of England" novel - while his previous novels had perhaps erred on the side of social satire and comedy ("A Room With A View" and "Where Angels Fear To Tread"), or been a personal projection ("The Longest Journey"), "Howards End" is more the work of ... Read More:
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.A Room with a View (Barnes & Noble Classics)

by: E. M. Forster

April 25, 2005
It's very simple really. I work all day in an office as part of a modern globalised monoculture.

And then on the way home I read A Room with a View and reacquaint myself with everything that's true.

Books like this are treasured friends.
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.A Passage to India

by: E.M. Forster

July 28, 2005
Almost a century after the book's publication the most crucial problems it discussed are as current as they were during Forster's life. The impossibility of communicating across the divide of culture, religion, and race, seems to be even more alive then when he saw it. The value of the novel lies not so much in representing it but in the fact that Forster offers a way out - personal contact. There is little chance people will suddenly like Muslims, Pakistanis, gays, lesbians, Moroccans, Turkish, Kurds etc etc - there is a chance (a very slim chance, Forster would be quick to add) that an American and a Muslim, a Turk and a Kurd, an Israeli and a Palestinian can be friends. The world may not want it, the people that surround them may not want it but the results depend on us alone. ... Read More:
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.A Passage to India

by: E.M. Forster

September 03, 1998
While the themes of this novel (largely racism and prejudice) are, sadly, apparently timeless, I didn't feel this novel had aged particularly well. The narrative style is definitely `of its age' which, for a modern reader, might be too slow and objective - too divorced from its content, making what should be a heart-rending, heart-stopping story just a bit of a drag. I don't feel this is an inevitable result of the age of the novel. Other classics - many much older, such as Dickens or Austen - retain an immediacy and a humanity across the decades, even centuries. But A Passage to India is - in style - much as it is in content: a study of a stuffier time.
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.Aspects of the Novel (Penguin Classics)

by: E.M. Forster, Oliver Stallybrass

September 01, 2005
After dazzling me with his wonderful novels, I read this critical work by Forster and it gave me a much clearer idea of some of the notions behind his own methods of writing as well as those of other twentieth-century novelists. He explains the need to create an aesthetic view of the universe when writing a novel, as logic and reality are not as important within literature as stylistic effect. He demonstrates this concept most clearly in A Passage to India where truth is so distorted that everyday objects are miraculously deified and Eastern mysticism is often undermined. He further illustrates the role of truth in fiction, whether through believable or unbelievable characterisation, or through use of artistic or journalistic language.
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.Where Angels Fear to Tread (Penguin Classics)

by: E.M. Forster

May 31, 2007
I first read this as a 6th form text in New Zealand in 1963 when texts were not prescribed. It was the choice of an inspired teacher who introduced us also to Janet Frame & Sylvia Ashton Warner. She ( & the novel) have remained with me for ever - we were allowed no references, had to respond only to what we read. Since then I have discovered much, including Italy, met the middle class values, etc. To revisit the novel is wonderful.


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.Maurice (Penguin Classics)

by: E.M. Forster

July 28, 2005
This is a beautiful, and short, story of a gay man's search for love. Because it's set at the start of the 20th century, the main character, Maurice, doesn't know the name for what he feels, nor that it's completely normal. Through his eyes, we see the discovery of his affections for other men, in contrast to what society, church and government expects from him. We see how trapped he is by class, and how he ultimately must give up his social status if he wants to be free to love.

Maurice must have anachronistically influenced Mary Renault's The Charioteer because the same themes pop up: gay men's secret society in prudish England, the idea of first love versus mature love, the hypocrisy of the bourgeois, etc. But, unlike "The Charioteer", this novel is more about the exploration of three world ... Read More:
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.Untouchable (Twentieth Century Classics)

by: Mulk Raj Anand

December 07, 1989
Interesting book that obviously succeeded in bringing to the attention of the world the problems of caste in India.

BUT, how is his proposed solution in the least bit realistic? (Won't say what it is, as this would spoil it for others.) Suffers a lot from the obsession that some Indians have with Gandhi - a great guy, but not exactly living in the same world as the rest of us.
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.Howards End (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (Barnes & Noble Classics)

by: E. M. Forster

2003-12
Interesting book that obviously succeeded in bringing to the attention of the world the problems of caste in India.

BUT, how is his proposed solution in the least bit realistic? (Won't say what it is, as this would spoil it for others.) Suffers a lot from the obsession that some Indians have with Gandhi - a great guy, but not exactly living in the same world as the rest of us.
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