Richard CanningBesprekingen

Canning interviews a dozen homosexual novelists about their work. Interesting and informative.

Let me begin by saying that I like literary commentary, and I appreciate what this book is trying to do. I purchased this book with the expectation that it would reveal novels hidden away from me during my education. The description on the back of the book supports this expectation. It lists some familiar names like Melville and Plato and then says that other authors "will be unfamiliar and waiting to be discovered." Moreover, the description never mentions those works that are already in the mainstream, like "The Epic of Gilgamesh" or Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass." And it certainly doesn't mention that the only work of Melville's discussed is his masterpiece "Moby-Dick"! It also never mentions Yukio Mishima or James Baldwin, both of whom I wouldn't say are waiting to be discovered.

Surprisingly, the back cover doesn't mention Evelyn Waugh, whose novel ("Brideshead Revisited") is kind of a cult classic and isn't particularly discussed in mainstream education.

Many of these essays are simply redefining the sexual orientations of particular authors. Was Whitman gay? The jury's still out on that one.
But this book implies that writers can only ever "write what [they] know," and so assumes that if there are homoerotic themes in a work of literature then the author must be gay. So, many of these essays stretch facts a bit too much, and rely too heavily on literary criticism to make assumptions about the writer. I mean, if the "author" is separate from the "writer" (which is a pretty common philosophical idea nowadays in the art of literature), then every such assumption is just specious and a waste of our time as readers.

The book makes this stretch for Plato, Melville, and Whitman. It's just exhausting to read about some writer's personal interpretation of classics, especially when the anthology is supposed to be introducing "new arrivals."

That said, each of the essays in this anthology are well written. Many of them are particularly creative. The most memorable essay in this anthology, for me at least, has to be the one where the writer was cleaning out an old woman's bookshelves and happened to stumble upon the work in question tucked away behind rows of dusty books.

It is because of the consistent quality of the essays that I rate this book as high as I am, though I would ultimately say that it's disappointing.

Canning has put together a powerful collection here--there's a good range of both styles and focus (with the theme in mind), and although one or two of the stories left me less than interested, the vast majority of the works here are beautifully written and tightly woven. Even within the theme, in fact, there's so much range of story subject and character that the collection never seems repetitive, which can too often be the case with collections like this. All told, this presented me with a few authors whose works I'm going to look up in the future, and was a striking and enjoyable read.

Certainly, I'd recommend it for interested short story readers.

This is a very competent, interesting and informative introduction to E M Forster, without any frills. It gives a brief but solid introduction to the man, his writing life and the evolution of his books. Richard Canning takes a chronological approach to his subject, and writes engagingly about him. I received the impression that Forster was a decent and complicated person, who, while struggling with his own sexuality during times that did not accept anything other than the standard (at least outwardly), was also adamant that he wouldn't let his mother know he was homosexual. Given that she lived until she was ninety-five, he had to wait a long time before he could be completely frank in public. He did not publish another novel after his famous A Passage to India in 1924, and lived a long life, dying in 1970 at the age of ninety. I am forever grateful to Canning for quoting Forster thus: '...since even in India he had felt unable to write creatively, telling Reid how "very unhappy" it made him to "see beauty going by and hav[ing] nothing to catch it in"' (52). Writing to me will now always be something to catch beauty in!

Many thanks to Hesperus Press for providing this book, and for their excellent series in general.

Quan comences a llegir la biografia d'algun personatge conegut, mai no pots estar segur de quin camí haurà seguit el biògraf: donarà més importància a la vida del personatge? La donarà a l'obra o a la professió? En aquest cas, Richard Canning intenta trobar el punt mitjà de descriure la vida d'E. M. Forster amb l'ànim de desvetllar característiques de la seva obra que en depenen. Així, a mesura que va explicant-nos la vida i l'obra de Forster les relaciona: com les persones que conegué en els seus viatges es convertiren en personatges en les seves novel·les; com els seus viatges a la Índia portaren a l'escriptura de la que és considerada la seva millor novel·la, Un passatge a la Índia; etc. No passa per alt l'homosexualitat de l'autor ni els seus esforços per ocultar-la a la seva mare, Lily, i també per causa d'una legislació que fins el 1967 la castigava —raó per la qual Maurice, escrita entre 1913 i 1914, reescrita al llarg de la seva vida, no fou publicada fins el 1971, després que Forster morís. També destaca el paper que tingué Forster en donar a conèixer a la Gran Bretanya, la poesia de Cavafis, a qui conegué a Alexandria.

Si busquem algun però a la biografia, en trobaríem dos: d'una banda, el fet que en alguns passatges l'autor faci referència a paraules d'altres autors sense especificar què deien, com si ho haguéssim de saber; de l'altra, que no aprofundeixi una mica més en la relació de Forster amb escriptors contemporanis seus que conegué, com ara els Woolf.

És, tanmateix, una aproximació interessant a la vida i l'obra d'E. M. Forster, valorat no només per les seves novel·les sinó també per la seva obra crítica; un personatge que malgrat els prejudicis inherents a l'educació que havia rebut i a la societat en què visqué, era capaç de posar-se en el lloc de l'altre i criticar el paper britànic durant el colonialisme —Un passatge a la Índia no fou ben rebuda entre els angloindis i sí entre els indis per com retratava les relacions entre colonitzadors i nadius.

Com a curiositat, destacar que Forster s'oposà sempre a l'adaptació cinematogràfica de les seves novel·les. Isherwood, que treballava a Hollywood, intentà convèncer-lo, però no ho aconseguí. Actualment, hi ha versió cinematogràfica de quatre de les seves novel·les, i també adaptacions d'alguns dels seus contes. Forster també participà en la redacció del llibret de l'òpera Billy Budd, basada en la novel·la de Hermann Melville, amb música de Benjamin Britten.

(Publicada també al meu bloc ½

I received this book through the Early Reviewer's Program.

This 'brief' book will not offer up many surprises for those already familiar with Forster's life. It is, however, an excellent introduction and as such is recomended.

I received this biography of E. M. Forster from Hesperus Press, through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program, and am very grateful to Hesperus and LT for the chance to read and review it. I've read all of Forster's novels at least once, and I read one full-length Forster biography many years ago. For me, reading Richard Canning's Forster biography in the Brief Lives series was like getting reacquainted with an old friend.

One irony of Forster's place in a series called Brief Lives is that he lived to be 91 years old. Canning manages to convey a sense of this full life, even though the book is not much longer than 100 pages. What I enjoyed best about the book was Canning's inclusion of vivid anecdotes, and telling quotes from Forster's correspondence, that illustrate Forster's personality and values, and bring him to life within a very compact narrative. One of my favorite anecdotes early in the book is about Forster's limited athletic talents, from his time at Cambridge:

Forster tried only once to get involved in the 'hearty' pursuit of rowing. Neither coach nor fellow rowers considered him anything but 'beyond human aid'. A reliable college man, however, he followed the crews' progress to cheer them on. ... 'To be patriotic I rode with them [the rowers] on my bicycle today, with the result that I cannoned into another bicyclist -- or he into me.' He miraculously avoided serious injury (p. 15).

For the most part, Forster was modest about his talents and accomplishments. After receiving some "cautious criticism" from a friend about one of his stories, Forster wrote back, "'I wish you had told me where are the facetiae: they are a most certain fault; and my taste doesn't guide me. Someone told me, many years ago, that I was amusing, and I have never quite recovered from the effects'" (p. 26). Forster once said of his second novel, The Longest Journey, that it "'comes nearest to saying what I want to say,'" although he also said of it, some 28 years after its publication, "'I am amazed and exasperated at the way in which I insisted on doing things wrong there'" (p. 34).

Canning covers all the primary facets of Forster's life and his most significant relationships, beginning with his very close ties to his mother and other female relatives (his father died before he was two), through his studies and development as a writer, his many travels outside of England, and his homosexuality. The last chapter, "Afterlife," discusses Forster's posthumous publications, including the gay-themed novel Maurice, which was completed about 1914, and the enduring popularity of his novels, five of which have been adapted to film. Forster certainly had faults, and Canning includes a few unflattering statements and anecdotes, but overall, the book is a portrait of a fine writer who also strived to be a good person. It's an enjoyable and well-researched introduction to Forster's life and writings.

This short biography of E.M. Forster, part of Hesperus Press' "Brief Lives" series, is an excellent one. It is not, nor is it intended to be, an authoritative work on Forster's life and work. It is, however, a good introduction. In a strictly chronological way, Canning hits the high points, and in so doing, he provides insight into Forster's life, his relationships, public and private.

There's very little discussion of Forster's works, except insofar as they fit within the biographical story. Indeed, if there is any part of the book that could have been eliminated, it is the short last chapter, Afterlife, which is as close as Canning comes to literary criticism. It seems oddly out of place.

While those who have read Forster will naturally find more in this book than those who have not, it can be read with appreciation by anyone, and any reader will find it informative. Definitely recommended.

I’ll bet most readers of the British writer and critic E.M. Forster (1879-1970) had no idea that he was gay until the posthumous publication of Maurice in 1971. Until then the author of, most famously, A Room with a View and A Passage to India, would have seemed as conventional as any other writer of his era. He would have been astonished to discover that in the 21st century he has become a gay icon, in company with Oscar Wilde whom he thought trivial.

I discovered Forster’s academic work first: Aspects of the Novel was a set text for my English major at Melbourne. As Richard Canning explains in Brief Lives: E.M.Forster, Forster would have liked to be a don:

It is a very great thing to be a don. I would have given anything and would give anything to be one. (p17)

It would have delighted him that this series of lectures came about because he was invited to give the Clark Lectures in 1927. Always pessimistic about his own efforts, Forster described these lectures as ‘ramshackly‘ (p84) but subsequently published in book form, they became extremely influential and were staple reading in literary criticism. Although the book is now a bit dated in the light of PostModernism and other developments, Aspects of the Novel is still widely read if the eNotes Study Guide is anything to go by.

As Canning notes, Forster had written his best-loved and most successful novels by the time he was in his thirties. (The last one was A Passage to India in 1924). He was interested in issues of social class and hypocrisy, and he was deeply influenced by his travels, most notably to Italy and India. (Interestingly he did not set any of his novels in Germany or Egypt to which he travelled as well). He satirised his own mother as the unbearable Englishwoman abroad but if she did recognise herself she kept on interfering in his life anyway. Inevitably he also modelled some of his characters on his friends, but it seems to have been mostly Forster who broke off some friendships rather than the other way round. It seems more likely that he chose not to continue writing novels because he could not write honestly about what moved him emotionally and he did not know how to write about heterosexual love with any credibility. His preference became literary criticism at which he was equally successful, presenting lectures on BBC radio and writing for all the major newspapers and literary magazines.

Canning is lecturer at Bristol and publishes widely in the gay lit field, so it’s not surprising that he focusses on this aspect of Forster’s life. What Maurice makes clear is the extent to which religious faith constrains sexual identity because the Bible is unequivocal: homosexuality is a sin and therefore it must be repressed. Forster’s character has to choose between faith and love, and can only do so in a fantasy greenwood, not in society. Canning, however, (and he’s not alone apparently) regards it as ‘dated’ because ‘by 1971, gay themes were coming in, but agony and self-agonising were out of style’ (p106). Perhaps in literature they were, but there’s a long way to go before coming out is an easy choice to make, even now.

Other subjects in the Brief Lives series include Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens and Tolstoy.

There’s a review of this book at Chroma which is well worth reading, and so is the Wikipedia entry about Forster.

Author: Richard Canning
Title: Brief Lives: E.M.Forster
Series: Brief Lives
Publisher: Hesperus Press 2009
ISBN: 9781843919162
Source: Review copy courtesy of Library Thing’s Early Reviewers Program

Cross-posted at http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/brief-lives-e-m-forster-by-richard-...

I wouldn't say this little book said anything about Forster I didn't already know, but seeing it's ten years since I was actively reading Forster and about him, this book offered a nice, lucidly-written opportunity to remind myself of main points, and has made me want to read the short stories again.

I would highly recommend this book to someone who doesn't know much about Forster's life and prefers to read a short book without a full-on citations of an academic work. There is an extensive list of works consulted at the end, some of which will probably go on my To Read list now.

This compact but highly readable biography is a fantastic introduction to E.M. Forster. Canning writes candidly about Forster's homosexuality and the impact being closeted had on Forster's fiction. Best for someone who's read a little Forster, this is still an enjoyable bio for anyone curious about writers, English colonial history, or BGLTQ history.

I think I have a bit of a publisher crush going on here. Just about anything I get from Hesperus Press hits the mark perfectly and this Brief Lives is no exception. It's a short book but it's crammed with facts about Forster's life. It provides a perfect broad overview of Forster's life and writing, someone that I knew little about before reading this. It may seem to lack depth of detail and interpretative discussion if you are someone who reads lengthy and involved biographical works but that is not its intention; it is, after all, one of a series of 'Brief' lives. As an introductory book about the subject, it is detailed enough to give the reader a sense of Forster and point them in the direction of areas of his life that might be interesting to investigate further. The writing is accessible and easy on the brain - it's not a dull book. A propos my publisher crush, I feel I have to mention that once again the paper quality is lovely on this Hesperus edition and if this makes a difference to your reading experience, as it does mine, then it will be a pleasure to pick up. I shall certainly track down the other books in the series.

Brief Lives: E.M. Forster, while under a hundred pages, is not slight. It is rich, informative, compact, and everything a good biography needs to be. Published by Hesperus Press, Richard Canning’s life of the author of A Passage to India and A Room With a View helps us understand how Forster, who wrote his last novel in 1924 and died in 1970 filled that span with a full life of critical writing, world travel (often in the company of his mother) and a never-ending search for love with a capital L.

He continued to write throughout his life but just not the great novel people hoped for and expected. He despised Hollywood and persistently refused to allow his books to be filmed. His libretto for Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd, was first performed in 1951 to critical acclaim. He corresponded with the vast cast of friends and acquaintances including J.R. Ackerley, Christopher Isherwood, C.P. Cavafy, T.E.Lawrence and many others. He lectured at Cambridge and wrote commentary for the BBC. He kept busy.

His inner life was a mixture of joy and sorrow. He was never willing to admit publicly to his homosexuality, partially because of the repressive laws of Britain at the time, but also to protect his overpowering (and long-lived) mother Lily. An early novel, Maurice, with it’s gay themes, would never be published in his lifetime. The foreword to Maurice describes his struggle with his own homosexuality.

His humanistic viewpoint led him to continually explore the themes of class differences.

I can only imagine that writing a short biography is an art of its own, consisting of many little, but important decisions - what to keep in, what to leave out, where to put a focus, where to stay short and concise. In his short biography of E.M. Forster, Richard Canning has mastered all these difficulties very well indeed. After reading this book you will know all that is necessary to know about Forster, without having spent more than a handful of hours, and you will be well informed on the most interesting aspect of Forster's private (and literary) life, namely his homosexuality. Canning finds the ideal mixture of concise facts, interesting anecdotes and important quotes.

It is therefore always a pleasure to follow Forster's development from being a child spoilt by his mother (who had a lifelong and all too strong influence on the writer), "dressed in girlish garments, resembling Little Lord Fauntleroy", "longing to be cowardly, not brave, since people hurt you when you are brave" to become a sexually repressed adult, who admitted "he had first understood sex aged thirty", always uneasy about his sexuality. We follow Forster's years in Oxford (which we find so well reflected in some of his novels) and on his travels around Europe and later on the World. The depiction of Forster's fascination with India lingers a bit too much on the surface, while the descriptions of his years in Egypt and his affair with the tram conductor Mohammed el-Adl are a tid too long-winded. But that remains one of the few objections one can possibly utter.

Along with Canning we wonder about the forty-five-years of writerly silence following the publication of "A Passage to India", watching Forster fall in love with the policeman Bob Buckingham, a member of the lower classes, which always attracted Forster in a special way. ("I want to love a strong young man of the lower classes and be loved by him and evenh hurt by him", Forster writes in an essay titled simply "Sex".) Forster had grown tired of his fame, writing to Buckingham: "The penalty of greatness is powerlessness, and I am seldom able to see or do what I want." In the final chapter called "Afterlife" Canning quotes Forster concerning his "writer's block" as saying that the only thing he still wanted to say was "love". This is a powerful last word by and on the ever insecure and disoriented, yet always humane, even loving writer that Forster is.

All in all: a very well written short biography with a few minor flaws, that I'd have awarded 4.5 even, if the book did not lack pictures (it simply would have been nice to see what Forster's mother and his lovers and acquaintances looked like). Still, a very good book - thanks for having the opportunity to review it as part of Library Thing Early Reviewers.

I received Brief Lives: E. M. Forster by Richard Canning as part from the Librarything Early Reviewers program directly from Hesperus Press.
This biography is part of the “Brief Lives” series by Hesperus Press, a series of short biographies on important authors.
I like the idea of offering an alternative to full length literary biographies - which usually are time-consuming to read – on the one hand, and to having to rely on Wikipedia for a more or less complete and accurate introduction to an author on the other hand.
In practice, a 100 page biography of an author, who became 90 and lived during a time where so much happened, is a very difficult undertaking. I believe the author did a very good job at that. Nevertheless I often wished for “more”, in regard to E.M. Forster’s life, as well as in regard to his novels. All in all this has been a worthwhile read though, as I did not know much about E.M. Forster before, and have not yet read anything by him. I plan to read at least “Passage to India” soon. Finally I’d like to point out that this is a very handsome little book on excellent paper.½

This book does just what it says on the label - a short but comprehensive review of Forster's life set against the times (and the particular difficulties faced by gay men in those times), and the genesis of his fiction, mostly written in the earlier part of his life. Having seen various films of Forster's books but not having read any of them, and knowing very little about his actual life, I foudn this a useful and illuminating work (supplied to me through Early Reviewers, but I think well worth purchasing for anyone wanting this type of introduction). One or two weaknesses - no references to sources (though there is a full bibliography), and the chapter on events post-1924 flits around a bit too much in terms of chronology, making it occasionally hard to follow. But these are minor objections.