wonderful insights from a great British novelist

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	• Aspects of the Novel E.M. Forster Harvest Books, 1956 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 12 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

wonderful insights from a great British novelist

This shortish book is composed of the transcripts of Forster's 1927 series of talks about the novel, and is divided into chapters on story, characters, plot, and pattern & rhythm. In my opinion the two chapters on fantasy and prophecy are less successful, but if you are considering this book then you should definitely read it. It's filled with wonderful lines and terrific criticism (both positive and negative) of contemporary novels by Austen, Wells, Scott, Dostoevsky, Proust, James and others, and it was this latter aspect that I found most enjoyable. There is also an index so you can find these references when you want to. Forster discusses the sense of time and space in literature, round and flat characters, food, sex, love, POV, story vs. plot and causality. I've been reading novels for several decades and have read a fair number of books about writing, and I still gained insight from this lively little book.

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Nothing Else Like It

Sometimes one reads a book and it opens up the brain and heart in such a way that one views the world differently thereafter. This is such a book. You will never again read a novel and think about the book in front of you or how it was written in quite the same way. There is nothing else like it.

Delving into this book was part of a quest over the past year to read books on writing by writers. The books did not address HOW to write a novel other than tangentially. Although there are a plethora of dubious choices along those lines, I stayed away from them. The books that I searched out were books on the process of writing, the very lonely experience of the writer in creating fiction.

Several of the books were fogettable. A surprising number of them were memorable, including Mystery & Manners by Flannery O'Connor, On Writing by Stephen King, and anything by Margaret Atwood.

Of all of the books that I read, this one was the best by far. It covered not only the process of writing but also provided a structure for discussing and understanding the novel art form.

As a result, I highly recommend this book for book clubs. When presenting this book recently to my book club of 14+ years as my pick, there was a collective groan. Upon finishing the book, we all thought that it was one of the best of the 125+ books that we had read. It gave us a missing structure and tools for moving discussions and disagreements forward. Several times over the years, one or more of us have disagreed over some book selection or an aspect of it, but the discussion would stall for lack of a way to bridge the various viewpoints. For the first time, we were able to go back through those arguments in a new light using the tools presented in the book. It was very enlightening.

The books's title tacitly promises dry intellectual discourse, but the text reads off the page as fresh as it certainly did when it was originally presented by Forster as a series of guest lectures at Cambridge.

Highly recommended reading.

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A lazy afternoon's reading

This book is an enjoyable monograph about fiction writing. While entertaining, it doesn't contain practical advice nor does the author take much time to describe his work or writing process. I believe this book will appeal mostly to academics or those who would take pleasure in whiling away an afternoon with an affable writer.

One insight I found very helpful was a suggestion for interpreting the work of Gertrude Stein. Forster describes the process by which she attempted to destroy time in a novel. I had never understood Stein's writing and this theory seems to provide an effective window through which to view her work.

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Genius

I will read this again and again. It's loaded, packed, stuffed with fabulous writerly advice.

Sandra Glahn, Lethal Harvest

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

Forster?s lively, informed originality and wit have made this book a classic. Avoiding the chronological approach of what he calls ?pseudoscholarship,? he freely examines aspects all English-language novels have in common: story, people, plot, fantasy, prophecy, pattern, and rhythm. Index.

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