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Sat 12 Dec 2009Mystery, morals and passion
LITERARY CRITICISM: COLM TÓIBÍNreviews Concerning EM ForsterBy Frank Kermode Weidenfeld Nicholson, 180pp. £14.99
IN 1972, THREE years before his death, the critic Lionel Trilling, who had published a book on EM Forster almost 30 years earlier, wrote to Cynthia Ozick about Forster’s homosexuality. “It wasn’t until I had finished my book on Forster,” he wrote, “that I came to the explicit realisation that he was homosexual. I’m not sure whether this was because of a particular obtuseness on my part or because . . . homosexuality hadn’t yet formulated itself as an issue in the culture. When the realisation did come, it at first didn’t seem of crucial importance, but that view soon began to change.”
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