Creative Writing Lectures - E M Forster Talks About Writing Novels - 'Only Connect'

E M Forster Talks About Writing Novels - 'Only Connect' This is part of a talk given at the BBC in 1958 by the great English novelist E M Forster - 'A Passage to India', 'A Room with a View', 'Howards End' and so on. In it, the author speaks about beginning writing and why he writes. He then discusses one of the reasons he dried up - that 'the social aspect of the world changed so very much' and that he had been 'accustomed to write about the old [now] vanished world with its homes and its family life and its comparative peace'. Studying Forster at university, one 'mantra' in particular stays with me today: 'Only connect. That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die'. (Ch 22 'Howard's End', 1910). He modestly states he thinks he is not a great writer as he had only managed to get down in his novels three types: 'the person I think I am, the people who irritate me and the people I'd like to be'. In this, he contrasts himself with Leo Tolstoy who 'can get hold of all types'. The talk is accompanied by footage of Forster in his rooms at Cambridge University. We see him walking about his study, fetching a novel from a book case and writing at his desk. In evidence on the mantle piece is the blue and white china collection he'd been putting together since his school days. E M Forster is my favourite novelist and so I was particularly pleased to finally see him on film and hear him talk about writing. Enjoy!