About:
Edward Morgan Forster was born in 1879 in London and attended King’s College, Cambridge, where he later became an honorary Fellow. After leaving Cambridge, Forster lived in Greece and Italy as well as Egypt and India. He is the author of six novels: Where Angels Fear to Tread, A Room with a View, Howards End, Maurice, A Passage to India, and The Longest Journey, as well as numerous essays and short story collections. He died in 1970 in Coventry, England.
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Book in review: Aspects of the Novel by E. M. Forster
This is a book written for lovers of contemporary writing with lively language with excerpts from well-known classics. Forster takes on the seven elements that are of utmost importance to a novel: story, people, plot, fantasy, prophecy, pattern, and rhythm. He defines and explains terms like “round” characters versus “flat” characters (and why both are needed for an effective novel).
The nature of the novel, when telling the story with chosen people, be it fantasy, prophecy, and how the pattern plays out with rhythm; meaning, is it real or not in the telling?
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What did I like about this read?
That saying: truth is stranger than fiction, and not knowing where one begins or ends, is the ending real in relation to the plot, or are we made to feel one way when in fact it is nothing but mere dust?
It comes down to human nature; thus, new writers of the novel will still encounter and face facts through the old lens, the variable mechanism of the creative mind, because the creative process will not alter, yet we have Artificial Intelligence (AI) writing as then but now, today. How different is the material, novel that is being output today, with AI?
Only if the novelist sees himself differently will he see his characters differently, and a new system of lighting will result. So the crab-like movement, this shifting of supposed ‘passengers’ on the train might be visible, and thus the novel is real and therefore is to the development of humanity however it stands within the 200 years history shown in this book which brings us back to Aristotle prompt: action denotes actions, brings life into despair, misery, and happiness relies on action.
Yet the plot is slow to develop at times; hidden in the shadows, like an iceberg until it is too late, as it is right on you. There must be a contribution to the plot; that narratives of events think of it which came first…example: “the king died and then the queen died” is a story; better yet, “the king died and then the queen died of grief” is a plot; one can ask what the queen had been doing? Nothing since she died of grief; she was inactive, no action but her grieving; so is the plot stale?
The book presents it as such: the queen died, no one knew why, until it was discovered that it was thought grief at the death of the king,” making this a plot with a mystery in it. Yes, it should be expected that the queen would die from despair, from grieving the passing of her husband, the king; but her lack of action: caring for her people should have spurred her on; yet, to appreciate a mystery, part of the mind must be left behind, brooding, while the other part goes marching on; there’s the action that Aristotle so proclaimed that is missed, yet not.
I, this reviewer, have been clinging to action within the novel, and I must also make mention of character development; in that they are either ‘flat’ or ‘round’; Falstaff is a perfect example of a ‘round’ character. Falstaff exhibits depth, hypocrisy, vulnerability, and a struggle with his own desires, which allows for fascination and varied interpretations across different works and throughout his literary journey.
Flat characters are called humorous in the seventeenth century, and are sometimes called types, and sometimes caricatures. In their purest form, they are construed around a single idea or quality: when there is more than one factor in them, we get the beginning of the curve towards the round. The really “flat” character can be expressed in one sentence, such as “I will never desert Mr. Micawber.” Similar to the queen’s passing away because of grieving for her husband, the queen is grieving because she does nothing else but grieve over the passing. And so too does the servant who refuses to desert his master; all his movements and actions exist to cover the poverty of his master.
Flat characters are more memorable, easiest to remember because they can’t be changed by circumstances; they move through the novel unchanged, for they are a comforting quality to the reader who, in turn, preserves them when the book has ended or is forgotten about, decaying even.
With roundness in characters we have Jane Austen; austerely the queen of roundness; ever changing; as her characters moves about realizing there is much more out there; they’ve changed or a stance is presented as wrong, thus changing their perspective, within this globe of a world and once the book has ended, the characters goes back to being flat again; like the animals in most stories are flat, never straying but on their mistress lap or by their feet, within reach.
So what do we want: jovial, lively characters moving the plot along, or predictability? The novelist must have closure, completion, and not be rounding but opening out, and perhaps why we have series; and series within series, or some writers today are doing it within different genres; when they end one, they begin another. Yet, is that good writing, or is it a novel buried in the genre limitation? The novel was to have been the complete story, but with writers today, we have sub-genres within the genre; we have ‘genre’ and not just fiction and non-fiction.
Perhaps as restricting as it was, it was best with the novel for today there’s too many genre and all doing the same thing in that they follow the same formula…like vloggers as they cook, clean, shop, decorate, fashion craving/piling, collectors, beautiful home; they all follow the same formula and it began with Hamimommy—housework motivation vlog who cooked and cleaned taking care of her family and so on…seemingly, all day long.
My spin on things digresses, but it was best when it was novels…one big read and none of these series.
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Well, I hope to return and add to this Art of Writing topic monthly. This month has not been good for this ‘pretender’ who is not a writer, but takes lots of pictures of things of interest to post on another blog. I hope to share something better next time, after all–this is what writing is all about…sharing/stimulating, and supporting one another.
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Thank you!