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E.M. Forster was oneof Britain’sbest-selling literary authors a century ago, and is known nowadays to art houselovers from film adaptations of HowardsEnd, A Passage to India and Maurice. In his perceptive and criticalanalysis, Frank Kermode writes that Forster “wanted to write books that wouldplease creative people but be bought by all the others.” In other words, he wasa fellow traveler of the avant-garde who wanted to remain accessible to thegeneral public. Although identifying the narrowness of Forster’s class bias,Kermode, one of the most engaging and witty of contemporary literary critics,approves of the novelist’s distaste for the tendencies that would coalesce intolate-20th-century cultural studiesespecially the privileging of literarytheory over the pleasure to be found in literature itself.
