false 263341 16 There are all kinds of books out there purporting to explain that odd phenomenon the novel. Sometimes it's hard to know whom they're are for, exactly. Enthusiastic readers? Fellow academics? Would-be writers? <I>Aspects of the Novel</I>, E.M. Forster's 1927 treatise on the "fictitious prose work over 50,000 words" is, it turns out, for anyone with the faintest interest in how fiction is made. Open at random, and find your attention utterly sandbagged.<p> Forster's book is not really a book at all; rather, it's a collection of lectures delivered at Cambridge University on subjects as parboiled as "People," "The Plot," and "The Story." It has an unpretentious verbal immediacy thanks to its spoken origin and is written in the key of Aplogetic Mumble: "Those who dislike Dickens have an excellent case. He ought to be bad." Such gentle provocations litter these pages. How can you not read on? Forster's critical writing is so ridiculously plainspoken, so happily commonsensical, that we often forget to be intimidated by the rhetorical landscapes he so ably leads us through. As he himself points out in the introductory note, "Since the novel is itself often colloquial it may possibly withhold some of its secrets from the graver and grander streams of criticism, and may reveal them to backwaters and shallows."<p> And Forster does paddle into some unlikely eddies here. For instance, he seems none too gung ho about love in the novel: "And lastly, love. I am using this celebrated word in its widest and dullest sense. Let me be very dry and brief about sex in the first place." He really means in the first place. Like the narrator of a '50s hygiene film, Forster continues, dry and brief as anything, "Some years after a human being is born, certain changes occur in it..." One feels here the same-sexer having the last laugh, heartily.<p> Forster's brand of humanism has fallen from fashion in literary studies, yet it endures in fiction itself. Readers still love this author, even if they come to him by way of the multiplex. The durability of his work is, of course, the greatest raison d'être this book could have. It should have been titled <I>How to Write Novels People Will Still Read in a Hundred Years</I>. <I>--Claire Dederer</I> 643099 book 1927 Aspects of the Novel total:407|5:86|4:173|3:123|2:20|1:5| 407 1536 701 47 5 2 false false Wed Dec 10 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Dec 02 16:06:09 -0800 2008 Wed Dec 10 16:41:22 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 1 false false Sun Aug 17 14:20:44 -0700 2008 Sun Aug 17 14:46:57 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Aug 11 05:54:36 -0700 2008 Sun Aug 31 16:58:05 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Feb 23 16:26:45 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 23 17:01:55 -0800 2009 ...more...]]> 4 2 false false Wed Oct 14 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 14 17:12:55 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 14 17:13:20 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 17 01:50:16 -0700 2009 Sun Nov 01 20:34:49 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Jul 10 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Jun 21 16:05:35 -0700 2009 Mon Jul 13 20:57:29 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Dec 31 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Jan 02 05:41:49 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 02 05:48:03 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 01 16:56:05 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 02 23:33:21 -0800 2008
The first half of this book is strong. For...more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Nov 18 23:37:32 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 01 22:10:51 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Nov 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Sun Mar 01 09:39:11 -0800 2009 Sun Mar 01 09:39:54 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Nov 18 22:01:03 -0800 2009 Wed Nov 18 22:05:50 -0800 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Sun Feb 01 20:50:19 -0800 2009 Sun Feb 01 20:50:19 -0800 2009 3 0 false false Fri May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat May 23 04:16:18 -0700 2009 Wed May 27 07:51:16 -0700 2009 Aspects of the Novel is a brisk, easily readable piece of scholarship.]]> 4 0 false false Fri Aug 29 09:27:56 -0700 2008 Fri Aug 29 09:27:56 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Nov 19 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Nov 16 17:31:16 -0800 2009 Thu Nov 19 10:35:12 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Sun Sep 06 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 02 03:26:19 -0700 2009 Sun Sep 06 23:19:36 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Apr 13 16:07:42 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 13 16:09:18 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Sat Aug 29 19:51:52 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 22 10:37:10 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 29 19:51:52 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Thu Apr 30 13:46:25 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 30 13:46:51 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=263341