A Study of E. M. Forster

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 118, 21 May 1938, Page 12 (Supplement)

A Study of E. M. Forster

READERS familiar with the literary work of both E. M. Forster and Rose Macaulay will open Miss Macaulay's study of The Works of E,. M. Forster" (Hogarth Press) with lively, pleasant anticipation. Some of them may be disappointed. The study is thoroughly done, but it is not done in .Mit-s Macaulay's manner. LVually she is cool, detached, ironical: here she remains cool, but not detached, ami certainly not ironical. She has subordinated herself to her subject. Mr. Foi>ler published his first novel iu l!Mi.">. and hit- lifth und three others bclore Kill. Then followed a long gap, until "A Passage to India" appeared in 1U24. Hy com pa rison with nearly every oilier author of rank, he has written little. >o that liis high reputation has a sounder basis than that of some of his contemporaries who "keep iu the public eye." by l'rei|Ueni publication and by activities extraneous to their literary work, lie writes no "'pot boilers" (having. presumably, other means to keep the pot comfortably warm l, but in what he publishes there is more than usual i|iiaiity. Miss .Mdeaulay finds his words •richly charged with percept ions of more than words can actually >ay. 1 do not know where the "charged' effect of-his prose is to be paralleled in Knglish fiction, except in sonic of the prose of \ irginia Woolf. ami here and there in I). I T. Lawrence's. It is something far more than style, and behind style: it. suggests Mich pressure of thought ami meaning on language that no word or

l>]iru«e is empty, and nothing said or done bv any of li is creatures is idle. . . His central interest is human relationships, but '"What we call Love, up Sex. does not loom witlr the conventional ami tedious predominance given it l»v most imaginative writer*.'' It is therefore unfortunate (though not for tliis reason alone) that he has founded 110 school, and has no recognisable imitators. Miss Macnulav deals fully with his literary work, and his outlook upon the world and life. 'Hie book contains a bibliography and a useful index.