Quantcast
Channel: Wm Henry Morris » The Novel
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 2

E.M. Forster on memory and plot

0
0

I’ve been reading E.M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel recently. It’s interesting to see that some of the truisms about fiction that have filtered their way to me over the years come from (or at least are gathered in) it. What I hadn’t seen before, however, is his discussion of plot and how grasping it requires intelligence and memory.

He writes:

The plot-maker expects us to remember, we expect him to leave no loose ends. Every action or word ought to count; it ought to be economical and spare; even when complicated it should be organic and free from dead matter. It may be difficult or easy, it may and should contain mysteries, but it ought not to mislead. And over it, as it unfolds, will hover the memory of the reader (the dull glow of the mind of which intelligence is the bright advancing edge) and will constantly rearrange and reconsider, seeing new clues, new chains of cause and effect, and the final sense (if the plot has been a fine one) will not be of clues or chains, but of something aesthetically compact, something which might have been shown by the novelist straight away, only if he had shown it straight away it would never have become beautiful. (133)


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 2

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images