here's something else interesting from the intro to my copy.the ending II
Posted by Kate on February 27, 1998 at 06:05:14:
here's something else interesting from the intro to my copy.
She (Mona Simpson) suggests that although the ending seems right, "the final five pages seem the most flat and lacklustre in the book". She suggests that it's a bit immature - and suggests that while until the ending "the sexual tones seem quite convincing, their consummation falters". This is because, apparently, Forster when he wrote ARWAV didn't actually know about sex!
Apparently Forster's biographer, P. Furbank says that Forsters mother never told him about it and that he said it was not until he was thirty that he understood how sexual intercourse took place - he wrote ARWAV when he was 28.
"Though the book is dedicated to HOM (Hugh Meredith, Forster's first important love) and the character of George is based on him, he and Forster had not progressed past the stage of Lucy and George in the Italian violets."
So Simpson suggests that the book loses its momentum because there's no real sexual undertones in the ending, that it loses its depth and texture at that point because basically he didn't know what he was talking about!
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