On Saturday, I hesitated over Frank Kermode’s Concerning E. M. Forster and left with other selections. But Edmund White’s review won’t let go.
White writes, “We learn that Forster would never have finished A Passage to India had it not been for Leonard Woolf’s prodding. Leonard was a brilliant editor, not only of his wife’s work but of the novels written by friends and the authors he and Virginia published. We read that Forster was, especially in his youth, a devoted Wagnerian, and that the concept of leitmotifs influenced his ideas about literary rhythm. We discover that Forster rejected Henry James in part because he did not want to conform to James’s practice of writing from a single point of view, and in part because he liked to express his own opinions about life and the world in asides to the reader.”
That last part stays. The asides. Something less guarded than James; the novelist stepping out from behind his own narrative to speak.
I didn’t buy the book. But I haven’t stopped thinking about it.
>Also saw this at Chekhov's Mistress. Bud did not offer his own opinion. And you left the possibility that you now reconsider at the store. Think I will wait for one of you to weigh in before I commit. Waffling, waffling – all of us.
>Frances – I got as far as buying it yesterday. Perhaps I'll get to it after To the Lighthouse, which I can barely tear myself away from at the moment.