Maurice by E.M. Forster
Maurice by E.M. Forster
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Of the writers whom I admired most when I was younger, Forster is one whose luster has dimmed in peculiar ways. I know perfectly well that he wrote fine novels and thought them some of the finest ever when I first read them. They suited the romantic ideas I had in my twenties, when having love in one’s life appeared to mean everything. Then along came Maurice, a book that he had written in the early part of the century but kept from publication till after his death. It was a book that barely touched the kind of music in his other novels, for me. The fact that it was about men loving men should have made the reading of it a transcendent experience, but that was not what happened. I found it tepid. There was some aspect of my reaction to it that puzzled me; by then I had read other gay books that really did reach me – this would have been the mid 1970s when I was in college. What puzzled me most about Maurice was that Forster wrote it so long ago – 1914 is the date that I have read, though I am no scholar and have not researched whether this is correct. But he died in 1970. It’s likely correct that its publication at that time would have ended his career – but he stopped writing and publishing novels in the 1920s anyway. And it’s also true that braver souls did publish gay novels in that era; Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness is one example, from 1928. By the time he died, gay novels and novelists were stepping forward. What a boon it would have been if Maurice had been presented while he was still alive to talk about it, and about himself, and what he knew. I have no idea what his motives were but the fact of this timidity – when compared to the apparent courage of Maurice himself – spoiled the book utterly. I cared even less for the movie, and have not reread any of Forster other than his prescient story “The Machine Stops” in a very long time. It’s likely that Forster’s self-hatred touched my own and threatened me in some way. My admiration went underground. In my novel Dream Boy I echoed the ending of Maurice rather consciously, when my two boys in love disappear into the greenwood, just as Maurice did. I’m certain that my reaction is not at all fair. But one wants one’s heroes to be heroic, and Forster was not. This is the Forster I built up in my mind, and not the real man, who owed me nothing, who lived his life his own way, and I’m aware of all that. I suppose I feel guilty for liking this book so little, and for reasons that have less to do with the book than with its context. But there you have it.