Homosexuality: A New Emphasis in the Revised Edition

antidote to what Anne Smith calls the "hothouse spirituality" of that book. Unfortunately, the brief vignettes that might have permitted a complementary view of the young Lawrence are undercut by what Editor Baron calls "Neville's tendency to transmute his material into saga or myth . . . [a tendency] reinforced In places by romanticising tones . . . ." Another objectionable tone tends to overwhelm the memoir. It is Neville's didacticism which gives his set-therecord -straight arrogance a philistine air. Thorton Wilder has said that too many of those who have written about Lawrence have done so without humor. Although there is precious little of It in George Neville's memoir, it is blessedly free of hagiography, at one extreme, and reductionism, at the other. Something of the enfant terrible somehow emerges despite the ever-present overlay of Lawrence's image, the intense quester seeking to break down the walls of a persona out of harmony with itself. If ever there was a writer to whom his own maxim trust-the-tale-not-the-teller applies, it is he. And it is back to the best of his novels that we must go for his celebration, not of the fragmented portions which attract the hobbyist, but of the whole person. Richard Hauer Costa Texas ASM University 8. HOMOSEXUALITY: A NEW EMPHASIS IN THE REVISED EDITION Frederick P. W. McDowell. E. M. Forster. Rev. ed. Boston: Twayne, 1982. $11.25 One may as well begin with the justification for a revised edition of the Twayne English Authors Series overview of the life and writings of E. M. Forster. (The first edition was reviewed in 1970 for ELT by George H. Thomson [13: I]. Because Thomson's readily available and excellent review discusses in detail the various aspects of the first edition of McDowell's study, emphasis here focuses primarily on what has happened in Forster studies since 1969, and how McDowell incorporates these trends into the revised edition.) Even though only thirteen years have passed since the publication of the original edition, several events significant to students of Forster have happened to cause both a renewed critical interest in, and a réévaluation of, Forster's works. First Forster, a living legend at King's College, Cambridge, when Frederick P. W. Mcdowell wrote the original E. M. Forster, died about a year after the publication of the first edition. His death led, as deaths of writers inevitably do, to renewed critical activity, especially to the study of lesser known works, to the publication of previously unpublished materials, and to attempts to find new approaches to the established works. McDowell himself aided in this with the publication in 1976 of E. M. Forster: An Annotated Bibliography of Writings About Him, which recorded with completeness and clarity the critical assessment of Forster through 1975, and suggested various avenues for new study. Finally, Forster's personal life and his relationships with various contemporaries have been examined from a fresh perspective , in part because changes In public attitudes about what constitutes permissible behavior has led to an open discussion of a lesser-known aspect of Forster's life; and in part because Forster's death was followed by the publication in 1971 of Maurice, and in 1972 of The Life to Come and Other Stories. The homosexual theme of these writings and the discovery by the reading public of Forster's homosexual preferences—discovery despite such records as Lytton 69 Strachey's now widely-publicized letter that discussed the homosexuality of Maurice in 1915—have led to a decade of speculation about the significance of this theme and its place in the re-assessment of Forster's life and works. McDowell has assimilated these considerations and others into his revision; and the new Twayne confirms McDowell's place among the most knowledgable of Forster scholars. The major new dimension in Forster studies is the homosexual one, because other criticism since 1970 has for the most part confirmed the perceptions of such earlier critics as Lionel Trilling, James McConkey, George Thomson, and McDowell. One might add that P. N. Furbank's authorized life of Forster (1977-1978) brought together and discussed candidly the multifold biographical aspects of Forster's life...