Word: forstered
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...Novelist Edward Morgan Forster had written three books, brilliant, brittle as spun glass and about as nourishing as popcorn. Then he went to India with a Cambridge don, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, his friend and spiritual mentor...
...their months in India there were two high moments for the young, hero-worshipping Forster. They dined at the mess of the Royal West Kents at the Khyber Pass. The young officers in their bright uniforms got pleasantly drunk, asked each other: "I say, will he put you in a book...
...through the grey and white mists. . . ." There the tiny, fantastic, incompetent Maharajah put on religious festivals for them ("Tell me, Mr. Dickinson, where is God?"), talked English literature ("See, Mr. Dickinson, that balcony - did Hamlet climb up there to visit Juliet?") and gave Mr. Dickinson his palace. Says Forster: "He forgot that he had given it to me only two days before...
Moment of Inspiration. That trip would have been as short-lived as the Maharajah's memory had it not been for the use Forster made of it. He studied India and the Indians, rulers and ruled. Out of these, and by the gift of some moment of inspiration that lifted his sar donic talent to genius, Forster wrote A Passage to India. Its history has been a 3 remarkable as the book itself, or its author...
Since A Passage to India first appeared, a small library of Indian fiction had been published. Much of it was brisk and readable. None of it attained the delicate, tough clarity of Forster's novel. Nor did any other English novelist, writing of India, possess Forster's unique talent -that of keeping his characters, their good & bad intentions, their hopes, fears and antagonisms, in a state of suspension so that their dilemma is timeless yet forever timely. No one who wanted to understand that great problem could afford to miss the reprint of Forster's novel...