Aspects of the novel (1927)

It's not an easy thing to eschew "hard" answers in favour of impressionistic observations. You worry about looking foolish, about feeling at the mercy of those who do have hard to purvey, about meandering your way into the grave after an uninspiring life. This is one reason that literary study, in the fifty or so years after EM Forster's series of lectures under the title Aspects of the Novel, clove to hard, hermetic, sealed, overdetermined systems of many unexpected sorts--still does, to a great degree. Your structural and poststructural analysis stops you from having to take the giddy leap and engage too closely with the Real--which, ironically here, is also the false in the sense of the artificial, the created: the novel.

It was an age of heroes, when your subjective impressions, maybe a couple of digs at donnish friends or foes, and above all lines, traces, forward motion, strings of character development or plot action or changing features of the language used, could in fact poesis make. I'm not convinced that that's not what responses to art shouldn't always be. But some people are tidiers-up by nature, and others feel the bourgeois pressure to put out a spread--so, after rightfully mocking and dismissing Hamilton's "nine types of fictional weather," Forster, for what seems purely hospitality's sake, comes at us with his own interpretative structure--the old Aristotelian standbys: character, plot, story, "rhythm and pattern", which are ill-defined but very much in the same superficially systematizing vein (by "rhythm" he seems to mean something I'd have called "choreography"). It'd be nice to know Aristotle better so I'd have a stronger sense of what here is his and what modern--certainly, everyone who's tangentially aware of this book seems to know it first for the distinction between round and flat characters, which is fine as far as it goes, I suppose, and nice in terms of the focus it puts on the necessity of flatness and of accessibility in fiction, and how the difference between fiction in reality is that access--fictional characters can sing their internal lives out, whereas we never really know what our real-life loved ones are like on the inside. Fine, fine. Good for a public lecture series.

But mostly it doesn't really turn my crank too hard, and when it does it's when he gets down to specific works--a hard-data supplement that stands in happily for the rigid-theory buttress that he works hard and mostly successfully to avoid. Open this for Forster's readings of Moll Flanders and DH Lawrence and Melville and most of all, The Ambassadors, which granted all my (extensive) complaints about James's method and then said "but after all, is there not something unique and pretty in that sensitivity, which not all its artifice and troubling implications about its author"--I always have the feeling that James would fretfully but gladly see you consigned to a prison camp for the poor and insensitive (the same thing, let's face it) if you were so berserk as to throw a frisbee near him or snicker at his ascot or call him "Hank"--but he wouldn't order it with curled lip, he would just observe in his Strong Sad voice that a cheap disc perhaps used by the tawdry in upsetting games had been rumoured to have entered his proximity. And then liveried servants or the Hand of God would snap to and whisk you away.

Enough about Hank James! Forster forced me to concede that there is a legitimate, albeit distended, art in James's discouraging prose, and he pulls off similar tricks with others, notably in the chapters on "fantasy" and "prophecy", which are where most of the good is in this b, as opposed to the no doubt noble efforts to say something interesting about "plot" and "story". ( )

It is a great pity that youtube was not around in 1927, to capture Forster delivering these lectures. We have them now in the book form as a series of essays, but they still sparkle with wit, knowledge, common sense and some fine writing. There are some arresting images: the authors all sitting together in a circular room struggling with their compositions, and the gaping shock headed cavemen listening to the story teller, which Forster uses to have a swipe at the film industry "The movie public: modern day descendants of the gaping cavemen."

For me it all really comes alive in essays/lectures six and seven, when Forster can let himself go and lecture with passion and imagination about the authors he loves. He says:

"For the first five lectures of this course we have used more or less the same set of tools. This time and last we have had to lay them down. Next time we shall take them up again, but with no certainty that they are the best equipment for a critic or that there is such a thing as critical equipment".

The lectures he is referring to are Fantasy and Prophecy. He has previously given us the critics tools to discuss aspects of the story, people, the plot and pattern and rhythm, but when he launches into his lecture on fantasy his own writing takes off. He starts with the wonderful image of the ascending bird and its shadow that resemble each other less and less as the bird flies higher, and goes on to say there is more in the novel than time or people and logic, but of course like the birds shadow it is not quite so distinct, not so easy to grasp. There is however a bar of light that can illuminate everything and Forster says "We shall give that bar of light two names fantasy and prophecy.

At last Forster can talk about the books and those things that go beyond the tools of the trade to make them special. He presents us with some surprising selections in his lecture on fantasy: Tristram Shandy, Flecker's Magic and Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm. He cheekily includes Ulysses, before ending with the Magic Flute.

It is his lecture on prophecy where he gets to talk about those great authors who write on universal themes and who have the power to sing. Forster warns us that to appreciate these authors, we the readers must have humility and the suspension of the sense of humour. He names four authors that he believes can illustrate this aspect of the novel: Dostoyevsky, Melville, D H Lawrence and Emily Bronte with D H Lawrence being the only living author (1927) in whom the song predominates and who has the rapt bardic quality and who it is idle to criticise. Enthusiastically Forster gives us examples from The Brothers Karamazov and then turns his attention to Melville and a lively short critique on Moby Dick is followed by his thoughts on Billy Budd. Forster's prose is at its finest here but he saves his best for D H Lawrence:

"Humility is not easy with this irritable and irritating author, for the humbler we get the crosser he gets. yet I do not see how else to read him. If we start resenting or mocking, his treasure disappears as surely if we started obeying him. What is valuable about him cannot be put into words; it is colour, gesture and outline in people and things, the usual stock in trade of the novelist, but evolved by such a different process that they belong to a new world."

This series of lectures, that give us the warp and the weft of aspects of a novel and gently chide us as pseudo-intellectuals, come dramatically alive as Forster wrestles with the ineffable. Great stuff. ( )

Forster has produced an absolutely delicious little book of criticism. It actually originated as a series of lectures given at Trinity College, Cambridge, and the chatty tone of the spoken word has not been edited out. Consequently, we have before us a lively and almost intimate discussion of certain “aspects” of the novel that Forster has chosen to speak about.

A definition of the novel was foremost on the author’s mind. He was operating within certain constraints in his lecture series regarding the scope of his topic, and so he chose to quote French critic Abel Chevalley in setting up the working definition for his purposes. Thus, a novel is “a fiction in prose of a certain extent” ("une fiction en prose d’une certaine étendue”). To this he added that it should be not less than 50,000 words.

While it is ostensibly a work of literary criticism, the book provided Forster with an opportunity to hold forth on certain characteristics of fiction that interested him. And it should not be confused with the typical writer’s guide listing the elements an author should consider in constructing a novel – such as plot, character, point of view, description, dialogue, etc. Some of these are indeed contemplated here, but from a critical or reader’s vantage point rather than that of a writer.

The aspects of the novel that Forster chose to highlight were story, people (two chapters), plot, fantasy, prophesy, pattern and rhythm, in that order. Story, people and plot are easily anticipated in any extended treatment of the novel. But the remaining aspects – fantasy, prophesy, pattern and rhythm are not such obvious choices, particularly considering the year (1927) in which the lectures were delivered. And as he progressed through his chosen subjects, he could cite fewer and fewer novels that demonstrated those aspects. Nonetheless, his ruminations thereon were charming and thought-provoking.

In the interest of simplifying his task of covering the whole topic of English fiction – originating far and wide across the then-Empire and encompassing two hundred years and countless authors – Forster asked his audience

to visualize the English novelists as seated together in a room, a circular room, a sort of British Museum reading-room – all writing their novels simultaneously. They do not, as they sit there, think “I live under Queen Victoria, I under Anne, I carry on the tradition of Trollope, I am reacting against Aldous Huxley.” The fact that their pens are in their hands is far more vivid to them. They are half mesmerized, their sorrows and joys are pouring out through the ink, they are approximated by the act of creation . . . That is to be our vision of them – an imperfect vision, but it is suited to our powers, it will preserve us from a serious danger, the danger of pseudo-scholarship..

“Pseudo-scholarship” is a particular Forster bugaboo that pops up from time to time throughout. In this case, we as readers are freed from the vagaries of period considerations

As to the aspects, summarizing what he has to say about each one is too daunting a task. Forster uses examples from great novels to illustrate his points. He quotes freely and at length and in the process, perhaps as an added fillip, engenders the desire to read or reread the subject works. His comments about particular works of Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Dickens, Dostoevsky, George Eliot, Henry James, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Melville, Proust, Sir Walter Scott, Thackeray, Tolstoy, Trollope, H.G. Wells and Virginia Woolf are golden and worth the price of admission.

Any reader or reviewer of fiction – whether literary, genre or whatever – can only be elevated and inspired by reading this book, which can be consumed in an afternoon. Be forewarned, however, that it demands to be reread. It is full of quotable quotes, wonderful insights and myriad ways to analyze that one might have overlooked or forgotten. ( )

If you've been working your way through academic papers, college textbooks, etc, then you will truly love reading this clearly written book on how the inner technical aspects of how novels are created. For anyone curious as to how writers go about their work, or if you're just looking for inspiration from a seasoned author, I highly recommend reading Aspects of the Novel. You may not agree with all of the statements but I'm sure they will be illuminating and help you formulate your own opinion on how stories reach us.

The first few pages are rather annoying and quite unlike the rest of the book which was created from a number of lectures by E.M. Forster. Usually people use the excuse that complicated things can't be made understood with simple language. Forster demonstrates this can in fact be done and does so gloriously. In this slim little book he gives us his perspective of why stories work and why they touch us.

Forster discusses such logical constructs as plot and narrative shape, but he manages to interweave that with a wonderful explanation on how fictional characters live in these strict models. What you take away from reading this is not a deeper understanding of how narrative works or how to create a masterpiece of fiction. Neither will it help you to pick apart a book such as War and Peace but it will form an excellent foundation and guideline to find further readings and understanding.

Most importantly Forster leaves every reader of his lectures the choice on what parts of his explanations to accept or reject and he does so himself of aspects of many famous novels. If anything this book provides clarity and a way to start thinking of why we like stories so much. ( )

For the first 30 pages, I was surprisingly annoyed with Forster. But for the rest of the book, I wished I were sitting in an Oxford pub with him, having a lively exchange of ideas. I certainly don’t agree with all of his opinions (such as when he completely disregards novelists’ sociocultural situations—though he describes his idea beautifully: “Empires fall, votes are accorded, but to those people writing in the circular room it is the feel of the pen between their fingers that matters most”), and some of his ideas I began by disparaging but came to understand only in light of later ideas (such as when he describes story as a “low, atavistic form”). But almost without exception, his ideas were fascinating and had merit. That plus his conversational tone (the book is actually a series of transcribed lectures) are what made me wish I were good-naturedly debating with him over drinks.

One of his most interesting ideas was that the difference between real people and characters in fiction is that we can never fully understand the secret inner life of our fellow human beings but fictional characters can be fully known to us. He says that the characters we feel are most “real” are not those who most closely resemble real people but those whom the author most fully knows. Not that the author will always explain everything about the character in the novel, of course, but he/she will express enough that the character will give readers a convincing surprise. He wrote a brilliant few pages in which he praises Jane Austen for her characters’ convincing responses to every situation (which is exactly what I love about her).

There are a great many more ideas in the book than that one I mentioned above. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes to philosophize about fiction, truth, humanity, art, etc. And, if you’re interested, meet me for a drink and we’ll have a good conversation about it. ( )