E. M. Forster: A New Life

by Wendy Moffat

One of the great mysteries in the life of E. M. Forster (1879-1970) is why, after the publication of A Passage to India in 1924, he never published another novel although he lived to be 90. In Wendy Moffat's biography, based on a lifetime's dedication to her subject, we gain extraordinary insights into a man with a gift for writing fiction of great humanity, warmth and humour, who realised early that the society of his time would not allow him to publish the fiction he really wanted to write.


At the end of A Passage to India, his readers were left with the melancholy sight of Aziz and Fielding, friends of different races and cultures, riding out of the novel down separate paths. In real life, although frustrated at not being able to write out of his true self - it would not be until after his death that Maurice, his novel of a homosexual affair, would be published - E. M.Forster led a full and energetic life. He was a successful broadcaster, a brilliant essayist (Abinger Harvest and Two Cheers for Democracy are still must-reads) and a leading figure in Europe's intellectual life. Moffat argues that with his support for colleagues from Lowes Dickinson and Radclyffe Hall to Christopher Isherwood and Benjamin Britten, and his quiet championing of humanistic values, he helped create the more tolerant world we now enjoy.


Moffat's achievement is not to show that Forster was homosexual (this is well known) but how deeply his ideas on individual freedom, tolerance, sexuality and love, permeated every act and aspect of his life.

• ISBN10: 1408809613
• ISBN13: 9781408809617
• Publish Date: 4 April 2011 (first published 7 June 2010)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 432
• Language: English

Reviews

[brokentune]

2.5*

Before judging my reading experience of this book based on my star rating, let me say this:

This was not a bad book and there are aspects of this biography that provide a valuable insight into Forster's life and work. However, this biography really follows Forster's life from one angle only, depending on what you expect from a biography, mileage on this may vary.

Moffat starts the book with an explanation of her approach, which in turn is based on something Christopher Isherwood said when looking at a stack of biographies about Forster:

"Of course all those books have got to be re-written," he said. "Unless you start with the fact that he was homosexual, nothing's any good."

That is, Moffat is quoting from an Isherwood biography by John Lehmann here, and whether this is a true account or was written as a dramatic embellishment, I could not say.
It does, however, go straight to the heart of Moffat's biography ... and also to one of the criticisms I have.

Moffat does an excellent job presenting Forster in the context of his sexuality, or more precisely his initial struggles with it and the immense pressure he felt of not being able to live openly for fear of persecution and, indeed, prosecution. Being a young man at the start of the 20th century, Forster would have only been too aware of the trials of Oscar Wilde and would himself witness the arrest of friends and acquaintances over the decades.

His resentment over not being able to tell the stories he really wanted to tell and over having to work within the expectations of societal conventions lead to Forster stopping to write major works of fiction after A Passage to India (1924). That is, he did write another major novel, Maurice, but insisted that it should not be published until after his death as the story tells of the relationship between two men and he feared the repercussions. (Btw, Maurice apparently includes a game-keeper scene that may have inspired D.H. Lawrence - one of the few people who were aware of the manuscript - to mock it in Lady Chatterley's Lover).

Moffat explores Forster's diaries - including his "locked" diaries, which he also only allowed access after his death - in detail and we do get a clear picture of the anxieties and of the passions Forster had, and Moffat does well to connect Forster's diary entries with the lives of his friends, peers, and with perception of homosexuality in society through the decades.

However, this is also the main point where this book fell down for me. Moffat goes into a lot of detail. Salacious detail. Lots and lots of it. At times, I felt like whole chapters were focusing about who bedded whom more so than Forster's life and work. Rather than developing an argument, it felt like some of the descriptions merely served to provide a sensationalist hook.

I really should have liked this more than I did, but the meandering descriptions of relationships (not just Forster's but also of his friends and acquaintances) made me skim over quite a few paragraphs. There was little point to most of them.

The other criticism I have is with Moffat's writing style. It did not work for me. Her narrative sounded dramatised in a way that made the book read more like fiction than non-fiction and some of the descriptions, as a result of the narrations, did not sound factual even tho they may have been. This was not helped by the way that references were not clearly marked in the text. They were there, of course, but I should not have to check the reference section in the book to see if a certain line on a page is actually backed up with a source of research.

All in all, this was interesting, but I would not recommend the book without some hesitation.