E M Forster Talks About Writing Novels - 'Only Connect'

This is part of a talk given at the BBC in 1958 by the great English novelist E M Forster - 'A Passage to India', 'A Room with a View', 'Howards End' and so on.

In it, the author speaks about beginning writing and why he writes. He then discusses one of the reasons he dried up - that 'the social aspect of the world changed so very much' and that he had been 'accustomed to write about the old [now] vanished world with its homes and its family life and its comparative peace'.

Studying Forster at university, one 'mantra' in particular stays with me today:

'Only connect. That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die." (Ch 22 'Howard's End', 1910).

He modestly states he thinks he is not a great writer as he had only managed to get down in his novels three types: 'the person I think I am, the people who irritate me and the people I'd like to be'. In this, he contrasts himself with Leo Tolstoy who 'can get hold of all types'.

The talk is accompanied by footage of Forster in his rooms at Cambridge University. We see him walking about his study, fetching a novel from a book case and writing at his desk.

In evidence on the mantle piece is the blue and white china collection he'd been putting together since his school days.

E M Forster is my favourite novelist and so I was particularly pleased to finally see him on film and hear him talk about writing.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• E M Forster
• novels

[priapus56]

Forster rather miffed me because he was very dismissive of adventure story writers like Scott and Dumas. It seems that many of those writers who are incapable of writing "rattling good yarns" become contemptuous of those who can. I am rather well-read, but I find D.H.Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Forster and the like almost insufferable. Give me Dickens, Scott, Maugham, Kipling, Stevenson, Doyle, Smollett, Defoe any day.

[nickwallacesmith]

hi priapus56 - we all have failings - forster and adventure writers - i wasn't aware of this in him. 'aspects of the novel'. in Dickens, Scott, Maugham, Kipling, Stevenson, Doyle, Smollett, Defoe you mention other favourites of mine, particularly Dickens, Scott and Maugham. i love Gabriel García Márquez ('one hunndred years of solitude') as he showed me other possibilities to the realism that has had a grip on the novels in English.

[balletnut]

Hi Nick,

You didn't say, do you like Tolstoy, the Bronte sisters or 'Wuthering Heights'?

I've got 'The Leopard' but haven't seen the film yet. What's the film like - as excellent as the book?

[nickwallacesmith]

... the film 'the leopard' was good and bad - a wonderful film (though i didn't like burt lancaster as the prince - he didn't have the necessary gravitas) but as i'd such a strong idea of how the protagonists were the actors in the film were necessarily a disappointment.

what other are your favourite authors?

cheers

[nickwallacesmith]

hi balletnut - i read a lot of Tolstoy at school - a bit too early to really appreciate him - something i remedied later. i remember being bowled over then by 'war and peace'

and i love 'Wuthering Heights' as an antidote to Jane Austen, who i love too but in a different way ...

[balletnut]

In answer to your question about which Forster book is my favourite, much as I love 'Room with a View, I think my favourite (if I HAD to choose) would be "Howards End'.

I think Tolstoy, Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters are my favourite authors and one of my favourite books is 'Wuthering Heights' because it's so evocative.

Cheers from the U.K.

[nickwallacesmith]

hi balletnut. to be truthful i love all of e m forster's novels. and i can lost in the 'howards end' at the drop of a hat. i read it in an honours unit at unit in the jurassic period . and did a semester unit on jane austen - one of my most totally pleasurable experience at college - and i've worn out copies through re-readings.

[balletnut]

Hi Nick,

I just can't imagine Burt Lancaster in the film of 'The Leopard'. He has neither the gravitas nor the elegance of the prince. I also gathered from the book that, although in the end, he was a lonely man, he could also be extremely witty.

As for other authors I like. There are many, particularly Donna Leon who has a detective based in Venice and he is Venetian to his heart. It's fairly light reading. Plus Dostoyevsky (I believe he was a horrible man), Solzhenitsyn, bio

All the best

[nickwallacesmith]

... there is a book, in fact hailed by forster as a masterpiece, lampedusa's 'Il Gattopardo' (the leopard) a perfectly constructed novel that moves in a very Italian way - do you know it? it's available free as an eBook at ebook300 - it was made into a film. best!

[nickwallacesmith]

hi balletnut - good to hear from you - and that you liked this upload - e m forster is probably my favourite writer - like you, hard to say which of the novels i like best. 'A Room with a View' has a special meaning for me as i left the conservative climate of australia as a kid and lived in france and a bit in italy as well as the UK - so this travel to escape has a real resonance for me. is there on which for which you have a particular affection?