Troubles of Biographers: F is for Forster and Fraud

Trouble: What do biographers do when they encounter a fact that contradicts the biography's "story"? 

Hopefully, they will be honest. 

Sometimes, they are not. 

Biography: Moffat, Wendy. The Unrecorded History. Straus and Giroux, 2010.

Moffat's biography The Unrecorded History is technically well-written. The problem is not the writing. The problem is that Moffat slides all available evidence into a single pattern. The result is a Forster who is neither as complex nor as interesting as the Forster revealed through P.N. Furbank's biography.

Moffat focuses on Forsters' relationships. Among the many relationships that she details, she presents two--with Mohammed and with Bob Buckingham--as absolutes. She more often than not "tells" the relationship story without "showing" quotes from either journals or letters. She is the equivalent of the good girlfriend who defends her best friend's relationships, even when he isn't so sure of them himself.

With Mohammed, she cannot withhold a slightly critical voice--but that is entirely due to Forster himself. Forster worried about the gap between him and his "lover" in terms of race, class, and philosophy. He was never sure if he was taking advantage or being taken advantage of. He also worried that he and Mohammed did not perceive "relationship" in the same light.

Moffat ignores these doubts, downplaying them whenever they rise to the fore. After Mohammed's death, Forster wrote out their history together. He was typically self-analytical and unswervingly truthful. In one of the most shearingly honest pieces ever written by a human being (other than C.S. Lewis), Forster writes to the dead Mohammed:

I wish I could distinguish more clearly between us, but it was always difficult, and now you are not here to correct me when I think of you not as you are but [as] I should like to think you . . . I am professionally a writer and want to pay you this last honour, although there is much that you will not understand, and some things that you will not agree with . . .

I could not find this letter in Moffat's biography. Whenever Forster questions his relationship with Mohammed, she argues that he is a man tortured by doubts, not a man reflecting honestly on a rather odd affair. While reading Moffat's account of Forster-Mohammed's relationship, I could never shake the uneasy impression that Forster made the entire thing up. Yet while reading Forster's letter (in Furbank's biography), Forster's very doubts led me to conclude, "Yes, this happened. It was real." It is Forster's astringent, self-aware voice that convinced me. In Moffat's hands, Forster turns into someone far more clueless about himself than every person connected with Forster understood him to be. 

Moffat extends this same interpretation of Forster to his relationship with Bob Buckingham. She wants to sell the story that Bob Buckingham and Forster were (1) lovers; (2) the love of each other's lives. 

Forster was consistently cagey about Bob Buckingham, who would have had far more to lose than Mohammed if Forster had played out a romance in public (or through letters). Moffat works hard to maintain that the relationship was a great romance because . . . I'm not sure why. I have a feeling that the reason is connected to Moffat's desire to see Forster more as an angsty Heathcliff than an objective Darcy. Or to her need to sell Forster as a man thwarted by society's rules when, in fact, he was the beneficiary of his social class--and knew it. (Forster wasn't the type of man to turn life's imperfections into his raison d'etre and he tended to avoid, or to sternly remonstrate with, people who did.) 

Bob Buckingham was a cop who was bisexual or open to any experience that would improve his lot in life or a warm-hearted, physical guy who never thought of himself as Forster's gay partner despite the equivalent of locker-room high jinks. He did marry after meeting Forster and by all accounts had a robust physical relationship with his wife. Although one of Forster's friends attempted to sabotage the Forster-Buckingham relationship by informing the wife, May, that Forster was undermining her marriage (by taking Bob about with him so much), the attempt went nowhere, mostly because May's attitude was that Bob hanging out with another man was better than Bob hanging out with another woman.

In his typically scrupulous manner, Furbank suggests that there may have been no ongoing physical relationship at all. Furbank is not being prissy or inhibited or homophobic. He is honest and non-judgmental about Forster's homosexuality as well as Forster's various relationships throughout his biography's 585 pages. He presents the option because he is a honest historian who cannot ignore the accumulated evidence, the lack of evidence, and Forster's personality.

And the evidence is that no one knows exactly what the relationship was between Forster and Bob Buckingham. Forster was highly self-analytical but also capable, as he admits, at creating scenarios that he wished to be true. He presented himself and Bob as partners to his Bohemian friends but so elliptically that one is left with the impression that Forster wanted his friends to believe that Bob and he were lovers, not that they actually were. (Or, rather, he wanted his friends to believe whatever they wanted to believe without Forster having to say anything at all, which seems most likely.)

Forster had the wonderful capacity to immerse

himself in experiences without judgment--

yet he was a shrewd judge of people and

events: not the kind of man to be conned.

When presented with outside evidence--Forster's wry self-analysis, for instance--that contradicts her pattern, Moffat fudges, even going so far as to cover up material that might undermine her narrative. 

At one point, she commits what I consider to be biographical fraud. 

When Forster had his first stroke and confessed his feelings to Bob Buckingham, Bob was shocked and denied (1) that he knew Forster was gay; (2) that he and Forster were lovers. Unlike Furbank (who deals with this event upfront), Moffat moves Bob's declaration to a side note at a later period of time, implying that Bob did not make such denials until AFTER Forster's death. 

But in fact, Bob made this denial several years earlier; six years later, he and his wife would care for Forster during his final days. Yet Moffat accuses both husband and wife of covering up the truth--so much so that they come across as low-life grifters out for Forster's money and prestige. (Even if the information wasn't learned until after Forster's death, Moffat's treatment of the event is deliberately misleading. There is a distinct lack of "transparency," which is a researcher's best friend and keeps the researcher honest: what exactly is the information's origin and context? Moffat uses a strict chronology when it suits her purpose. When it doesn't, she obfuscates.) 

Those who knew and met the Buckinghams  including Furbank, found the possibility of their deliberately lying to protect themselves highly unlikely. From all accounts, including Forster's willingness to befriend the Buckinghams, they were honest, intelligent, unsophisticated people. Bob especially took things at face value. His wife May was more discerning though more likely to worry about Forster's increasing forgetfulness than his sexual orientation. 

Based on Forster's droll assessment of himself and his various relationships, intimate and not, I rather think that he and Bob Buckingham did exchange some physical intimacies, the type that a highly physical good-old-boy like Buckingham would never define to himself as "gay" since he did not seem to think that he was. (A reality ignored in Moffat's biography is that people are far more varied in their responses to sex and sexual identity than a label. She also ignores that social expectations/attitudes towards male "bonding" have changed in the last fifty to sixty years; even the language has changed from "friendship" to "homosocial" to "bromance.")

Forster sitting next to May Buckingham

When Forster met Bob Buckingham, he was older, wiser, tired, happy with his circle of friends, happy to have a "consort" of sorts to take around with him when he visited his Bohemian friends (who strike me as far more naive than Buckingham's wife) and may have decided, "Hey, I'm a middle-class Englishman with no desire to be a rebel and a lessening sex drive. This works for me!"

And it did. The Buckinghams invited Forster into their home, and most of Forster's friends accepted the Buckinghams as "good sorts". The Buckinghams cared for Forster through various illnesses and broken bones. May Buckingham specifically was an extremely good friend to Forster. He was godfather to the Buckinghams' son; when the young man died, May and Forster consoled each other. One gets the impression that Forster preferred this middle-middle-class family to his Bohemian and upper-middle-class friends. At heart, the guy really liked the middle-class life, even as he critiqued it.

Forster fell in love; Masood didn't; they remained friends. By

his own assessment, this was one of Forster's most important

relationships--every relationship mattered to him.

There are ways to reconcile or at least explain the perspectives of all those involved. I attempted one reconciliation above. Moffat never tries to do this or allow for it--hers is a-one-size-fits-all pattern. If Forster stated something that fits the pattern, she accepts and reports it; if he later qualified or contradicted previous statements (as humans are wont to do), she ignores or downplays his equivocation. Her treatment extends past Forster to his friends: If what you're saying agrees with Forster having notable, dramatic so-called "real" romances, you must be speaking the truth. If you doubt or question those romances, you must be afraid of speaking out.

The problem is not that Moffat is selling Forster as a gay man. He was. And it informed his life and perspective, as Furbank makes clear. The problem is that she doesn't accept that relationships are more complex than one-winner-takes-all. As mentioned above, after a few chapters with Moffat's book, I felt like I was reading a high school confessional: My best friend luved this guy in high school, and that friend was soooo into him, so it MUST have been, like, the biggest romance of the century.

People live on continuums, not absolutes.

Moffat wrote her biography based on "new" material. I imagine she went into the endeavor believing she would find fresh "proof" of her version of events. She didn't. Sayers wrote an entire mystery about this problem. Gaudy Night is based on the back-story of a young researcher who is unwilling to give up his erroneous theory and ends up getting fired and later dying. He leaves behind a vengeful wife, contemptuous of the entire academic establishment. In this case, I side with the academics. However, I acknowledge: the pressure to stay with one's original idea must be tremendous. 

The result of not giving up that original idea here, however, is sad. In the long-run, Moffat misses out on the objective, idealistic, sensitive, friendly, self-knowing, and wry E. M. Forster that others understood him to be--in and out of his intimate relationships.

If you are interested in Forster, I highly recommend Furbank's biography instead. 

Furbank, P.N. E.M. Forster: A Life. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978.

Forster and Travel

Forster fascinates me as much as a man as a writer. Furbank's excellent biography reveals a man who was diffident, opinionated, well-read, a product of his class yet surprisingly lacking in the prejudices of that class.

He had the remarkable ability (echoed in Fielding's character) to accept what a country or place had to offer. Consequently, he is probably one of the few intellectual travel writers who recognized the "boring" side of a place. Forster rarely fell victim to the "I am having a NEW experience--it MUST be grand because I am ABROAD!"

Forster's refusal to produce knee-jerk intellectual glorifications of his travels reminds me of a comment by P.J. O'Rourke when visiting the South American rain-forest:

"[The male witch or shaman] seemed to be a nice man, very dignified with sad and common-sensical eyes. I'm sure he was, in his way, as pious and devout as ever was Reverend Lackland, the incredibly boring pastor of Monroe Street Methodist Church, which I attended as a child in Toledo, Ohio . . . In fact, the [shaman's] spiritual cleansing ceremony was at least as tedious and lengthy as Methodist Sunday school."

Barbara Thorndyke: I was in Morocco when

I had writer's block...the man gave me [this]

brooch; since then, I've never had a problem.

This is my muse, my artistic inspiration.

Blanche/Rose: And it goes with anything!

Barbara: You missed the point of the story.

Blanche/Rose: Oh, really? Run it by us again.

It also reminds me of a scene in Golden Girls where Dorothy's new friend, Barbara, tells her
pretentious story of being "spiritually" inspired by a foreign place. Rose and Blanche keep interrupting with mundane comments. Barbara gets irritated: Rose and Blanche aren't responding properly; they're supposed to be awed by her soul-changing experiences. It's an astute encapsulation of adopting a pose about travel rather than being a honest tourist. Because of course, Barbara stayed at the nicest Americanized hotels. She only experienced "the other" as a touchstone to her own life.

Rather than producing knee-jerk intellectual pseudo-spiritual reactions, Forster observed. He was also willing to go along with the events of the moment (there was a playful side to Forster). When visiting the Maharaja (before he went to work for him), Forster and his British companions were given Indian court dress. One of Forster's friends "later recalled that, of all the guests, Forster wore his with the most dignity." Forster's friend guessed that princely grandeur appealed to Forster. My guess is that unlike the other guests, Forster wasn't self-conscious. His attitude was "oh, okay, why not."

  Forster was, in other words, the kind of tourist who, while visiting a country, stays not in the fancy "American" hotels but in a local hostelry. Eats the food. Wears the dress. Watches the entertainment. Talks to the natives. Yet at the same time, he is perfectly willing to say, "Hey, that makes me uncomfortable" or "Boy, that entertainment was tacky" without such comments becoming an indictment of the entire culture. Since he knows that every place has its complement of normal everyday people, he more or less expects to encounter the same variations of interesting, monotonous, enthralling, unusual, silly, puzzling, and self-interested behavior everywhere.

Forster measured a thing for its own sake or by his immediate subjective response, not because it did or didn't match up to what he was used to or what he was supposed to be experiencing.

So, for example, at the Maharaja's banquet, he disliked the apple-like sauce; heartily disliked the "dreadful little dishes that tasted of nothing until they were well into your mouth, when your whole tongue burst into flame"; become quite attached to a sweet rice; and so on.

Forster is NOT the kind of tourist who would visit Japan, stay in a monastery, then complain because it wasn't central heated. On the other hand, he might say something like, "I can never get used to waking so early." That is, he wouldn't immediately decide that the experience was "special" because it was supposed to be. Nor would he decide that it was dreadful because it wasn't what he imagined. He would simply decide to experience it. And if he got a little cold, that was part of the experience. He may or may not experience it again. That decision certainly wouldn't be based on what he was supposed to feel or think.

None of this is to say that Forster didn't have his prejudices. But he had the remarkable ability to objectify his own imagination.

Forster as Role Model

Forster is an interesting example of an author whose work I only tepidly admire but for whom I feel a great liking.

So often it seems to be the other way around!

Forster is someone I probably wouldn't get along with in real life--he was a tad too highbrow--yet someone I easily understand. The product of the British upper middle-class, he was not exactly snobbish, not exactly intellectual, not exactly Bohemian, and definitely not a "good old boy." He went his own way without fanfare, so much so that even the Bohemian set failed to really "get" Forster. He was no rebel yet far more tolerant than I am of insipid philosophizing: he found D.H. Lawrence interesting if vaguely irritating, stating at one point that a book of Lawrence's was "the queerest product of subconsciousness that I have yet struck--he has not a glimmering from first to last of what he's up to."

Yet at the same time, he warns readers in Aspects of the Novel to avoid "resenting or mocking [Lawrence because then the writer's] treasure disappears as surely as if we started obeying him." I confess to being less kind to Lawrence, yet I admire Forster for reminding me to judge a book not by an outside official standard but by what the author is attempting to achieve (in this regard, Forster reminds me of C.S. Lewis's Experiment in Criticism although I've found no evidence that the two men met and cannot imagine they would have gotten along--though I could be wrong). 

I don't know if Forster would have liked Blackadder, but

he seemed to share many of his attitudes.

Forster's approach to politics was not dissimilar to his literary attitudes. He was able to stand outside any event, including his own self, and analyze it objectively even as he reacted to it with great sensitivity ("sensitivity" here means an eye for detail as well as tremendous compassion--many friends and acquaintances of Forster thought him the kindest soul they had ever met; it also refers to easily hurt feelings, the last of which Forster would wryly admit to). During WWI, he served more than competently as a searcher through the Red Cross (so well that he was promoted), yet he refused to report for military service, not because he was a conscientious objector (he admitted he wasn't) but because he had no desire to involve himself in what he considered a pointless war and he certainly couldn't fight. The "good old boys" of the British army were stymied. Forster pulled strings and was utterly unapologetic about doing so. The "good old boys" gave up trying to figure him out.

This is Forster: not lacking in moral beliefs but holding such moral beliefs that refuse to be categorized; consequently, he was sometimes perceived (on both sides of any issue) as lacking in commitment, even though he turned out to be invariably right about the pointlessness of running after a particular cause or banner. Yet even when right, he never saw himself as any kind of leader.

I mention his wryness. Forster's humor is entirely understated. He isn't precisely sarcastic and he isn't ironic in the manic style of Monty Python. In fact, he isn't truly ironic at all. He is, that blessed English word, droll. And not constantly droll or witty like George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. Forster's drollness is just there--quietly buried in gentle, analytical, friendly, occasionally quaint, descriptive sentences.

So at the beginning of Aspects of the Novel, whilst distinguishing between story (something happens; then another thing happens; then another thing) and plot, he writes (about story):

It is immensely old--goes back to neolithic times, perhaps to paleolithic. Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by the shape of his skull. The primitive audience was an audience of shock-heads, gaping around the campfire, fatigued with contending against the mammoth or the woolly rhinoceros, and only kept awake by suspense. What would happen next? The novelist droned on, and as soon as the audience guessed what happened next, they either fell asleep or killed him.

The final line slides in there without any preparation. I read past it for another three lines before I started laughing my head off. 

Likewise, in a letter regarding Thomas Hardy, Forster reports how Hardy showed him the graves of all his cats. "How is it, Mr. Hardy," Forster asked, "that so many of your cats have been run over? Is the railway near?" When Hardy replied that it wasn't; he didn't understand the number of mowed down cats himself and in any case, these weren't all of his cats, Forster ended the letter by commenting that he had difficulty not laughing, "it was so like one of Hardy's novels or poems."

Dog Culture

What draws me to Forster is not any particular biographical note or even a desire to imitate him.
Rather, I admire his reluctance to perform the tribal rituals of a particular clique or group or faction. And I like his steady refusal to see this as some kind of failure (though I haven't quite achieved that last yet). Forster's position is rather like always being the odd one out in high school, even moreso since it extended--with Forster--to literature, art, religion, politics, nations, relationships, and theories about life. Forster tried hard (and mostly failed) at being atheistic. Still, I utterly understand his quiet dismissal of people insisting that he THINK or BE a certain way. He is tremendously comforting to the individual who wishes to be neither follower nor leader, rebel nor patriot, conformist nor non-conformist.

And he seems to have enjoyed life far more than many of his contemporaries.

Two Problems with Biographies: E.M. Forster Under Scrutiny

Two biographies/analyses of E.M. Forster indicate the problems with biographies.

The first, A Great Unrecorded History by Wendy Moffat, is selective to the point of occasionally, uncomfortably, being less than upfront. As a reviewer on Amazon caustically but perceptively points out,  "[W]hy, if Moffat is emphasizing the all-encompassing Sexuality Motif in her rendering of Forster's life, did she not explore the obvious?"

In other words, why is Moffat only emphasizing certain material, when so much more was available to her? And why does she fail to address potential issues? There are multiple places where Moffat should--but does not--stand back and say, "But of course, there's another side to the events in Egypt . . .  Readers may wonder why the Buckinghams maintained a different version of events. . . " and even, "But of course, Forster himself had differing reactions to his experiences." 

Forster was obviously something of a romantic idealist with a strong self-critical streak as well as a critical eye. He seems to have swayed between the version of his life that he wanted to be true and the version of his life that he accepted, in his droll way, as more likely. Moffat appears to prefer the romantic, idealistic version. Yet Forster often refutes this version of his own life--as any self-analytical person might do, dissecting, down the road, the version that seemed comfortable at the time. Moffat, however, accepts only the version that supports her thesis, often summarizing material rather than allowing quotes to speak for themselves: the quotes provide a far more complex reading. 

From a researcher's point of view, the biography not only fails to prove its thesis, it fails to noticeably or subtly address the opposition's objections. Ignoring the obvious and/or refusing to address the obvious indicates, as the above reviewer maintains, an agenda.

Having allowed for an agenda, I suggest that all biographers run the risk of "falling in love with" the subject. After all, getting to know someone so intimately is bound to encourage an attachment. I get this person. I know him or her.

So pedestal-creation (he was perfectly miserable! he was perfectly happy!) makes for an interesting but not all-encompassing or trustworthy biography.

On the other hand, the literary analysis--the biography portion follows the lecture chapters--of Frank Kermode's Concerning E.M. Forster seems to suffer from an opposite tendency, one  I encountered in my master's program. While studying critical analysis of popular culture, I came across scholars who desperately wanted to talk about popular culture, who actually liked it, but were far too embarrassed to be matter-of-fact and open about their liking.

Apparently, Forster is one of those "great" writers whom the academic establishment is vaguely embarrassed about--"great" but not as "great" as D.H. Lawrence or Henry James.

Kermode is not blind to this perspective and even seems to steady himself for the inevitable criticism (unlike Moffat, he is eminently aware of what outsiders might say) but the apologetic tone irritated me after awhile. In a passage about Aspects of the Novel, Kermode states the following:

[Forster discussed story and plot] simply and memorably, perhaps too memorably . . . The book was a big success though of a genre in which Forster might not have expected success. And that is good cause for congratulations: it was good that he, so skeptical about the value of all criticism, should test the opinion as a practitioner. Yet it remains possible to complain that in a book on such a subject he ought, perhaps, to have looked about him rather more . . .

I'm not making this up: in a single short paragraph in a lecture about Forster, Kermode qualifies any positive statement about Forster four times. I had to read Aspects of the Novel (for the first time) myself to realize how good it actually is and to appreciate that Forster crafted his lectures as carefully as he crafted his novels. Kermode seems to wish that Forster had used Aspects to create a list of "people I have read and approved of," but this type of list is precisely what makes so much literary analysis--and so many Hollywood biographies--so tiresome; Hollywood biographies focus on "all the people I know and approve of," but the result is an equally dull jockeying for status and position.

Kermode returns several times to this lack of position-jockeying in Forster--why didn't he?!--rather than accepting that Forster had darn good reasons, as a darn good analyst and writer, to limit his examples in Aspects of a Novel. He was defending claims, not soothing literary egos.

I accept that Kermode sort of admired Forster, but his analysis left me with the opposite impression. Although he seems to have liked A Room with a View, the bulk of his analysis reads as coming from a man deeply uncomfortable with his subject-matter. Since I am entirely capable of making up my own mind about Forster, I prefer reading material by someone who likes him (as he actually was) and his writing (as it actually is). Lionel Trilling, maybe?

The two issues--lack of critique; abundance of apology--may be inevitable to any biographer. When they can be solved, the result is impressive: the subject is objectively but not unfairly explored--the biographer is willing to question while still ultimately taking the subject's side.

It can be done! It is admittedly less than easy.

The successful biography

The Echo in Forster's A Passage to India

In A Passage to India, while Miss Quested recovers from her reckless flight from the caves before the trial, she discusses her experience with Mrs Moore:

 "There is this echo that I keep on hearing."
 "Oh, what of the echo?" asked Mrs Moore, paying attention to her for the first time.
 "I can't get rid of it."
 "I don't suppose you ever will."
 Ronny had emphasized to his mother that Adela would arrive in a morbid state, yet she was being positively malicious.
 "Mrs. Moore, what is this echo?"
 "Don't you know?"
 "No---what is it? Oh, do say! I felt you would be able to explain it . . . this will comfort me so . . ."
 "If you don't know, you don't know; I can't tell you."

The echo is a trope in the book and is used with not so subtle artistry in the film. It is one of those things that English majors like myself love to speculate over. Here is my theory:

The echo is the gap between what our primitive selves desire and what the civilized trappings of society supply. To put this in Freudian terms, it is the gap between the id and the superego that the ego struggles over.

In the film, Lean replaces the car accident with Miss Quested

encountering Hindu statues of loving couples--as I

mentioned: not so subtle.

David Lean leans (ha ha) towards the sexual part of this equation and it underlies Forster's far more subtle ("cryptic" says one reviewer) definition. Miss Quested agrees to marry Ronny after their near accident with an animal--one of their passengers claims it was a ghost; either way, it is a force from the dark, primitive side of nature. Miss Quested enters the cave pondering with all the capacity of her frontal lobe if she truly loves Ronny. The novel's penultimate accusation arises from what she experiences, alone, in the cave--the echo arrives with it, only exorcised or mostly exorcised when Miss Quested is wholly honest with herself in court. Irritated by so much posturing over a tepid accusation, Mrs Moore exclaims fitfully, "Love in a church, love in a cave, as if there is the least difference."

All the difference in the world, Forster might have said, even though Mrs Moore is speaking--to a degree--for him.

Marabar Caves, based on the Barabar Caves (inset)

Forster includes more than lust in his primitive equation: he includes imagination as well as the fear of death (Lean alludes to both). The primitive self isn't simply the self that wants and pines for another; it is also the restless self that dreams of irrationalities (can those two things ever be untwined?). Miss Quested comes to India full of expectations and desires about the place and Ronny that come not only from her active imagination--the part that schemes and plans--but from her buried imagination, the part of her human self that yearns towards certain images and outcomes.

Miss Quested is practical, confident, self-analytical, honest, but she lacks the basic understanding--at least at the beginning of the novel--of that crazy poet from New England, Emily Dickinson: "But never met this Fellow/Attended or alone/Without a tighter Breathing/And Zero at the Bone."

"It's like dogs," says a character in Agatha Christie, defending the atavistic reaction of her child-self; "they know death and throw back their heads and howl."

These are responses that bypass reason and go right for the amygdala. Likewise, we can hope and dream for half-acknowledged things that reality can never give us because our primitive self propels us towards them.

The echo begins as early as Aziz and Mrs. Moore's meeting

in the mosque.

In the dissatisfaction between what we whine for and what we actually get lives the echo. And a great deal of fiction.

Which means, of course, civilization. Forster is no rebel--he isn't extolling the dismantling of civilization for the sake of the primitive whine. After all, as Agatha Christie would have acknowledged, children often remember things wrong. Basing day-to-day functioning on dreams and fantasies is hardly productive, especially since these are the types of desires and fantasies that are not wholly worked out in our frontal lobes (evolutionary psychologists spend a great deal of time trying to figure out what these desires and fantasies are). Societies function due to the civilized trappings we create. Do we create them to stave off the dark--the unexplained and uncanny? To control it? To master it?

Unlike some of his contemporaries, Forster seemed to think that the point was not to rip everything down and start over or even to run out and challenge the norms. He seemed to approach the issue with a little bit of fatalism and a little bit of optimism. Achievement occurs when one finds and makes a space for oneself that one can live with.

The letter to Miss Quested

In the movie, Lean gives Fielding the indirect line (Aziz is quoting him), "Stella [his wife] believes the evil of the Marabar has been wiped out." But in the book, the line from Stella stands without the insertion of "evil." Wiping out "the Marabar" doesn't refer to the false accusation. It refers to the characters having moved into spaces where that particular echo no longer haunts them. But that doesn't mean the spaces they have moved into don't have their own faint echoes.

Book to Movie: A Passage to India

Aziz, Godbole, Miss Quested

*Slight Spoilers* (I read the book and saw the movie for the first time this summer--there may be others like me out there!)

Passage to India (1984) is a faithful rendition of the book. It also proves, in passing, that Alec Guinness (as Professor Godbole) never fails a part (one is not supposed to think this--one is supposed to dislike Guinness in the part, but I find dictatorial Ivory Tower "film" analysts irritating, and I think what I think).

Actually, the entire cast is impressive. Plus, they are faithful to the book's characters.

As I mention in previous posts, I don't necessarily view faithfulness to the book as a requirement. More than anything I want the scriptwriter/director (both David Lean in this case) to admire the original text, to care about it, to want to make it work.

In this case, the care and admiration truly begins with the cast:

Victor Banerjee is so perfect as Aziz, I exclaimed on the fact several times during the film: sweet and carefree until the trial knocks him for a loop; extroverted; somewhat guileless; eager to please. Banerjee was 38 when he played Aziz and appears younger. Banerjee's ageless aura makes plausible Aziz's willingness to reclaim his former self at the end of the movie.

Dame Peggy Ashcroft gives Mrs Moore exactly the right combination of free-spiritedness, exhaustion at the follies of humankind, and generosity. She isn't an activist--she could/would never have taken on Dr. Fielding's efforts to help Aziz. But she effortlessly highlights why so many people, from Aziz to Miss Quested, adore her, honoring even the evocation of her name. She is a saint--without being saintlike (not an easy characterization to achieve: Forster based her on a beloved aunt).

Judy Davis as Miss Quested. Based on the picture on the DVD cover, I was a little worried about Judy Davis. Miss Quested is a level-headed, down-to-earth and not beautiful woman. The point of her not being beautiful is not that she is plain but that the trial centers on her gender and her Britishness, not her looks. It also highlights her integrity. Like Elizabeth from Pride & Prejudice, she isn't seeking marriage and/or approval for the sake of marriage and approval. She also isn't being sought after. She is a free agent who acts according to her own reasons. Consequently, the reader (and the viewer) come to believe that Mr. Fielding is right to protect her at the end.

Judy Davis is, frankly, quite lovely. But like Joan Fontaine, she pulls off the girl-next-door look. And she has this stunning husky voice that sells her later testimony. Since the movie is hers (the book belongs to several voices), she is slightly more sympathetic than in the book.

Aziz and Fielding

James Fox as Fielding explained James Wilby (Maurice) to me. There is a definite bromance in A Passage to India, the novel,  between Aziz and Fielding. It is (slightly) toned down in the movie. I thought it would be removed entirely, but David Lean appears to have found it utterly non-threatening (until the final scene, which is unhappily not as sweet and sincere as in the book) to making his point. James Fox is blond, lanky, and refreshingly non-politically-correct in Fielding's sincere desire to help Aziz. Three years later when Merchant Ivory went looking for Maurice, it couldn't have found a closer correspondence to James Fox than in the younger James Wilby. Both castings may have been a fluke (as claimed); both were brilliant.

Nigel Havers as Heaslop is the only character who is somewhat unlike his book version. When Forster took against the pompous nabobs of his own class, he really took against them (as he admitted wryly; after all, he was one). Book Heaslop is so chauvinistic, dictatorial, full of himself and his "right" to behave like a condescending Empire builder, it is unimaginable why Miss Quested wouldn't have drop-kicked him off the field of her heart back in England. Heaslop is the type of "good old public school boy" in India that Kipling--who supported the Empire--loathed; Heaslop is also the reason one starts to side with political correctness after too much exposure to the type.

Nigel Havers is more clueless than obnoxious, making the engagement slightly more comprehensible. 

Another aspect of the movie that shows Lean's appreciation of the book is his reliance on the echo--What does the echo mean? More in a later post . . .