University life novels Videos

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+somerset hi! i think Forster talked and wrote to connect - maybe it's not an either or situation?

yes, isn't it. and Forster's self-awareness and clear view of things is a lesson to everyone - it's so easy to have one's perception skewed by desires, wants, visions of what one would like to be and the like.

yes, his wisdom still translates - one of my favourite authors - fascinated by the technical wizardry of his seeming simple sparse style - like the rapid changes of point of view.

hi Magnificat17an old love of mine too.i too was moved by hearing him speak for the first time - different from what i might have imagined - more steady and calmer - i don't know quite what i imagined though.i loved in Forster that quick change of point of view - often several times in a paragraph - masterful. and the writing so paired down to essentials. i read him today with the greatest pleasure still.'Maurice' was such a powerful book for me - critics do not like the ending - but, given social attitudes to gay at the time, stepping out of England and making a new life elsewhere where things might be different works very well for me.

+TheLightofAniu I suspect many gay guys at some time fall for a straight guy - curiously I think of mine every day still - much in the way T S Eliot said he thought throughout his life of his ‘hyacinth girl’, a woman he met early in his life. And he used this experience in ‘The Waste Land’:Lovely to hear from you again. I led you unintentionally astray about T S Eliot - I mentioned him in the context of an unrequited love - like the one i experienced. Eliot’s unrequited love was the ‘hyacinth girl ‘ - perhaps an idealised love of his youth. Eliot had a very difficult marriage - to Vivienne - his wife was schizophrenic and died in a mental institution.having said this it has often be thought the author was gay, as Suzanne W. Churchill argues in her book ‘Outing T. S. Eliot’:https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/criticism/v047/47.1churchill.htmli must say i tend to read a book without stopping - some friends had to delay a holiday so i could finish a book.i read ‘Sanditon’ - a curious idea of Marie Dobbs and Anne Telscombe completing an author’s last unfinished novel. it didn’t quite work for me - it seemed a bit water colour Jane Austen. by the way, i see it is available free in the Guttenbery Project://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/fr008641.htmlThe Phantom's Dream seems a great idea, particularly as it’s stimulated by the letter you mention. Good luck with the writing.we are cranking up for a hot summer here - over mid 30s today and it’s still only late spring.

+John Hall Thank you for the kind reply.  I never knew T. S. Eliot was gay!  Well, it is true that we learn something new every day.  and not at all, about rereading Tolkien.  I loved reading him when I was a child, now at 18, I am more than willing to reread them again and again, which I have done already, I finished The Lord of the Rings a week ago, and consequently, read it in a week.  And I think the unfinished works would have been brilliant.  Had The Watsons - which I have read and seen the original manuscript of - and Sanditon been completed, I think that they too would be among the wonders of Literature.  I love Austen and remember many of her quotes.  Persuasion is a very close second to Pride and Prejudice because it deals with a very real issue, and I love the idea of a second chance.  I love how we can see Austen's characters today, in everyone.  Today for example, I saw a very plumped up version of Mrs. Bennet and a very notable sighting of Mr. Willoughby.  But indeed, I am glad that we both have found our Mr. Darcies.      I am very well and I have started a new novel entitled: The Phantom's Dream, the continued story of the one who called himself The Phantom of the Opera, since new evidence has come into my possession, a letter written by his great, great, great, great grandson.        I hope all is well in Australia, and wish me luck since it is most dreadfully wet.  

+TheLightofAniuYes, at a certain age of life (at least I am speaking about me) one can always be better. And I am surprised how easily I accept various physical deficits and problems - I thought this would be very difficult for me as I did not see myself as strong in this way. Weak(er) in other ways of course!My sister was a Tolkien enthusiast as a kid and I think I didn’t read him till later as a consequence - he was her author in some way. I must read him again now - thanks for the nudge in his direction.I suspect many gay guys at some time fall for a straight guy - curiously I think of mine every day still - much in the way T S Eliot said he thought throughout his life of his ‘hyacinth girl’, a woman he met early in his life. And he used this experience in ‘The Waste Land’:“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;  They called me the hyacinth girl.”  —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,  Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not  Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither  Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,  Looking into the heart of light, the silence.  Öd’ und leer das Meer.‘Looking into the heart of light, the silence.’ is it for me.Ah. My favourites too, followed closely by ‘Sense and Sensibility’. I love the new direction ‘Persuasion’ was taking - taking the characters out of England and what I suspect Austen was seeing as the limitations of the county life she was embedded in. Makes me wonder how her writing would have developed had she not died youngish at 42.Yes I am well and glad to hear you are too - with the rider that well is relative.The very best.

+John Hall Thank you very much for your asking if I am well, I am, but could be infinitely better.  As we all can be.  At present I am reading Tolkien's The Silmarillion, and I am thoroughly enjoying the stories I began reading when I was five, with The Hobbit.  I am thankful for my life and love, though there are times when I think that Fate plays her cards skilfully, and rather cruelly.  However, I am well.  As to your "in love with straight guy" situation, (please not that the speech marks are not intending to be offensive if you see them as such,) I have had very much the same.  It was difficult.  But I have gotten better.  As to the Austen stories, I read Pride and Prejudice first, and then it was Sense and Sensibility.  Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion are my favourites.  They have the most passion in them, I think.  And I love writing about Austen.  She wrote with her heart, as I do, by hand.  I hope you are well and congratulations to your relationship and that is marvellous, beyond measure.  I wish you all the best, and that you are well.

+TheLightofAniui’m not sure i was brave - i think that there’s a certain amount of chance about bravery - most of the time it’s not there for me and then sometimes it is - lucky if it is when you really want it - telling my parents was one of those lucky days!yes, some gay kids have a very tough time with their parents, very - mine were kind of neutral about it - but they didn’t like it deep down and when once a relationship broke up and i was upset they said ‘well it’s only a gay thing - it’s not a real relationship’ - a finger up to them situation as you say! i cannot imagine not just loving and cherishing and helping a child, whatever his/he orientation. as long as the child is sincere and means well all the rest does not matter.like you i’ve used letters to say things - in my early 20s i was very in love with a straight guy and after some months could not bear not telling him. we were once in Inner Mongolia in a yert way, out from anywhere from any town and he wanted sex but just sex for relief not for love - i could tell him how i felt face-to-face but wrote it later in a letter - saying if he didn’t want to see me after that that was fine with me, i would understand. we saw each other again but it was not the same. but i felt glad i’d spoken. i too have a lover now - of 23 years standing - we are lucky!yes, rather conventionally i read Pride and Prejudice first, but then read the others quickly after as i loved Jane Austen’s writing. i like least her ‘gothic’ first novel ‘Northanger Abbey’  it’s Jane Austen but different - and like Sense and Sensibility best - i can read and re-read it endlessly. in my first degree i did an honours topic on Jane Austen - one of the happiest university experiences i ever had!i hope you to are in great spirits and life is treating you very well!

+John Hall To your coming out, you had more bravery than I did.  I couldn't speak it, I had written my mother a letter.  I remember that day very clearly.  It was a very packed day, stressful and I had the encouragement of a friend, but by that time I had had no lovers.  I have one now, and I am very happy and writing away for nonowrimo now.  I am writing a spy novel now, like le Carre's novels.  I am very happy that you had the courage to come out, and if they didn't like you could at least stick two fingers up to them.  The thing about parents are: they haven't failed if they have a gay child, rather they fail because they disowned their child because they are blind to the gem they were blessed with.  That is my philosophy when it comes to matters such as that.  I know too many people when it comes to coming out who were thrown out by their own kin.        Anyway, yes I agree that it comes as a matter of principle as to a tower of strength.  I'd never be able to face a court, I'd naturally wilt out of nervousness.   But that must come in time.        I enjoy his stories and I want to read more of them.        Also, as to Austen, what was the first book of Austen did you read?  Was it the traditional Pride and Prejudice as it was for me?  Or was it like Mansfield Park or Sense and Sensibility?        I hope you are well and that the days have been prosperous and plentiful for you.  

+TheLightofAniuour lives seem to have a lot of parallels - my early reading was of the classics mostly, with Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, D H Lawrence, Homer ... now when i look, a very mixed bag.different stories have to have their own endings and i understand there are essential reasons why some cannot end happily - they are telling a different thing - a tragedy with a yes, Forster, who seemed in some ways so personally timid was in fact on matters of principle a tower of strength - as when you sya 'I was surprised that Forster stood up in court to destroy the ban on D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover'i came out as an early teenager - i had a partner at 14 and there was no use in denial - i still recall the crackling atmosphere round the dinner table when i made my announcement - and i wonder at my courage at telling my parents, who, to their credit and though they were not happy, allowed my partner to continue joining our family of summer vacations and the like.

+John Hall I am glad that this is a good thing.  The novel is a beautiful story.  I am glad that i came to it when I did.  I came out a long time before I read any E. M. Forster.  I read a lot of the Classics, mainly Austen and Leroux and such.  But I am glad that I have come to E. M. Forster, because again the stories have set my creative side flowing.  And sadly with my novel set on board the Titanic, I cannot give them a happy ending as in Maurice.  It is terrible that such things happen.  I also agree that the way forward is to stand away from oppression, and Britain was, and still is, oppressive in many ways.  I was surprised that Forster stood up in court to destroy the ban on D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover.  

+TheLightofAniu yes, like in 'Maurice' a journey away from oppression is the way forward - some said it was contrived but i disagree - living in Australia where many people came to find other destinies it seems very plausible indeed.being started in 1913 or 1914 it was still connected to the Edwardian era and not too far off the Oscar Wild trial of 1897, it seems to me that emigration is a likely option for two young meni like that we can now read the epilogue that was not originally included - what happened to Maurice and Alec after the novel ends.i am French on one side and Scottish on the other - my great grandmother, Louisa, a very un-Scottish name but i guess a nod to the origins of the British royal family's origins, not uncommon at the time.so pretty far in - have you a sense of how it will unfold - sometimes writers feel their way along and sometimes have all things determined - and positions in-between.

+John Hall I am pretty far in to the story, they have just left Queenstown, now named Cobh, and they are steaming into open ocean.  It explores the life of someone who has had to live through not just the disaster, but because he has had to hide who he is because of Britain's oppressive nature to both human nature and anything that they think scandalous. Even though I am British myself, I am Scottish, I have always found that the way of thinking then positively ridiculous.  And I am glad that Maurice ended in a good way, like Forster said, he didn't want to end the book by "a lad gangling from a noose or a suicide pact".  I really enjoyed Maurice and shall continue to do so.  It is the time that interests me and the sense of forbidden love in it.  

+TheLightofAniu yes, lovely to meet and speak with someone who appreciates this truly remarkable man. it seems to me Forster had a bigness of outlook and sentiment which is remarkable in that he grew up cosseted and bound into a world of tea cups and restricted Victorian middle class attitudes and values - he was able to fit in there, but at the same time be something quite different at Cambridge University and in his novels without seeming duplicitous.1912 for your novels is such an interesting choice - the British Empire at its twilight and the maelstrom of WW1 about to overwhelm Europe. all in counterpoint - or otherwise - to one's characters and plot and theme. how far are you with your stories?

+John Hall Indeed his voice is wondrous, and he too is my hero, one of my idols that inspired me to write myself.  I am writing several stories of Maurice's nature at the moment, set in 1912 but with a backdrop to the Titanic, which is the most recent one.  I am glad to be able to speak with another lover of this remarkable and talented man, as a writer and as a person, he was wise and witty.  That is plain in many of his books.  

hi TheLightofAniuForster has been my literary hero since university days - he overcame the limitations of the restricted context of being tied to his mother and family social circle - and his prose is so precise and sparse - with ideas hinted at rather than ploddingly spelt out - i could go on about him forever!it is great hearing him speak - his voice was stronger and more authoritative than i'd imagined.a truly great man.

Any chance of the app to come to android?