Only connect...
Aug. 24th, 2006 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
decemberthirtyOnly connect the personal with the universal. Only connect the practical and the passionate in your own nature. Only connect with your fellow human beings. Only connect the self to the larger world. Only connect the past to the future by means of living consciously in the present. Only connect the soul with nature. Only connect the theoretical to the real. Only connect the heart with the mind.
I finished Howards End last night, and I don't think I've ever read a book with a more fitting epigram. The idea of connection, connection in all the forms listed above and more, runs through every aspect of Forster's narrative. To Forster, connection seems to mean living one's life with deep understanding -- of one's self, of society, of one's place in the grand scheme, of the essential humanity that unites mankind -- and it's clear that believes strongly in the importance of this kind of connection. The whole book serves as an extended argument in favor of this sort of consciousness, and of the sorts of activities that Forster believes are necessary to attain it: introspection, provocative conversation, exposure to art, music and literature.
Howards End is a novel of ideas. Connection is the primary concept that drives the book, but it is stuffed full of all sorts of other abstractions as well. Class and nationality figure prominently, as do modernization, the future of England, and a strident sort of proto-feminism. All these big ideas made it a rather uneven book. There were moments when all of the philosophizing got in the way of the story and moments when the characters seemed more like figures in an allegory (the Schlegels representing Intellectualism, the Wilcoxes representing Materialism) than like real people, but these were offset by moments when the characters really did come alive on the page, when the force of the story took hold and all the abstractions dropped away.
The plot was a bit scanty for my taste; I kept waiting for the story to really get going, and it was only when I was halfway through the book that I realized that things weren't going to get going any more than they already had. I was pleasantly surprised when some seriously gripping drama turned up in the last quarter of the book, although I'm not entirely happy about the way things were resolved. I think that's just me being petty, though. I was never able to get over my dislike of Henry Wilcox, and so would rather have seen him end up abandoned and suffering. I guess I'm not a very nice person.
Next up, in yet another effort to find something that truly knocks my socks off, is Roddy Doyle's Oh, Play That Thing. If Doyle is able to achieve anything like the combination of hilarity and heartbreak that he managed in A Star Called Henry, then this will surely be the book that puts an end to my reading slump.
I finished Howards End last night, and I don't think I've ever read a book with a more fitting epigram. The idea of connection, connection in all the forms listed above and more, runs through every aspect of Forster's narrative. To Forster, connection seems to mean living one's life with deep understanding -- of one's self, of society, of one's place in the grand scheme, of the essential humanity that unites mankind -- and it's clear that believes strongly in the importance of this kind of connection. The whole book serves as an extended argument in favor of this sort of consciousness, and of the sorts of activities that Forster believes are necessary to attain it: introspection, provocative conversation, exposure to art, music and literature.
Howards End is a novel of ideas. Connection is the primary concept that drives the book, but it is stuffed full of all sorts of other abstractions as well. Class and nationality figure prominently, as do modernization, the future of England, and a strident sort of proto-feminism. All these big ideas made it a rather uneven book. There were moments when all of the philosophizing got in the way of the story and moments when the characters seemed more like figures in an allegory (the Schlegels representing Intellectualism, the Wilcoxes representing Materialism) than like real people, but these were offset by moments when the characters really did come alive on the page, when the force of the story took hold and all the abstractions dropped away.
The plot was a bit scanty for my taste; I kept waiting for the story to really get going, and it was only when I was halfway through the book that I realized that things weren't going to get going any more than they already had. I was pleasantly surprised when some seriously gripping drama turned up in the last quarter of the book, although I'm not entirely happy about the way things were resolved. I think that's just me being petty, though. I was never able to get over my dislike of Henry Wilcox, and so would rather have seen him end up abandoned and suffering. I guess I'm not a very nice person.
Next up, in yet another effort to find something that truly knocks my socks off, is Roddy Doyle's Oh, Play That Thing. If Doyle is able to achieve anything like the combination of hilarity and heartbreak that he managed in A Star Called Henry, then this will surely be the book that puts an end to my reading slump.
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Date: 2006-08-25 12:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 04:52 pm (UTC)