On the trail of Cambridge's rich and radil queer past | Gay and lbian travel | The Guardian

Contents:

• GAY SEX HALTED E.M. FORSTER'S CAREER
• A NEW NOVEL REVENTS E.M. FORSTER’S CLASSIC GAY LOVE STORY ‘MRICE’
• E M FORSTER'S GAY FICTN
• “ALEC” NTU THE STORY OF E.M. FORSTER’S CLASSIC GAY NOVEL “MRICE”
• HOW MATTHEW LOPEZ TRANSFORMED “HOWARDS END” INTO AN EPIC PLAY ABOUT GAY LIFE

GAY SEX HALTED E.M. FORSTER'S CAREER

My own life has spanned the Stonewall challenge through the plague years to a time of gay soldiers and gay marriage, where claimg civil rights for same-sex relatns has turned some mted upl to the ordary folks next door. Forster’s “Mrice” offered a rarefied view of queer possibily: a happy endg for gay men, wh the book’s protagonist, the wealthy and well-ted stockbroker Mrice Hall, fdg love wh the young groundskeeper Alec Scudr. It is also a novel about social class a way most fictn about gay men still do not manage: Clive is upper class, Mrice is middle class, and Alec, workg class, and Forster portrays the rol each is prsed to bee of this, and their ristance or submissn to the mands of those rol.

A NEW NOVEL REVENTS E.M. FORSTER’S CLASSIC GAY LOVE STORY ‘MRICE’

And then he seemed to abandon wrg fictn altogether, up until his ath 1970, when news me of this fal, unpublished novel, as well as a llectn of stori, both about gay thor who would bee so famo for wrg the words “Only nnect” had, unknown to his readg public, wrten his diary 1911 of his “wears of the only subject that I both n and may treat—the love of men for women & vice versa.

” He had already fallen love wh the iend he would base Clive on—a iend who would read the novel he started two years later, about the stggle to live as a gay man Edwardian England, a stggle known timately to Forster, who revealed 60 years later, the posthumoly published novel’s “Termal Note, ” that he, like his characters, was a homosexual. Cynthia Ozick’s surprisgly sldg and chaotic 1971 review of Mrice Commentary, “FORSTER AS HOMOSEXUAL, ” which she lls Forster’s posthumo revelatn of his sexualy an “dac slap the face, ” clus a cent one-paragraph summatn of what we might ll the first public Forster, the one the public thought they knew when they mourned him:He endured the st of bachelor liv, wh, seen om the outsi, no taclysms. There was not the slightt b of anger at what the world had nied Forster, and only ntempt at what he himself might have nied himself as a argument over whether Forster was right or not, or even pole or or “dac, ” to whhold the novel and then publish posthumoly obscur the mix of ways queerns and homosexualy were prosecuted and sists there was a sgle right rponse to his prediment.

In sectns tled “Not on the three men, ” “Homosexualy, ” and “A Note on the Text, ” the note scrib brief the novel’s genis and missn and how he found his three characters—Mrice, Clive, and Alec—as well as his ratnale for wrg and then whholdg the novel.

E M FORSTER'S GAY FICTN

Any endg sympathy wh a homosexual person, happy or tragic, uld ve a crimal charge at the time the novel was wrten and all the way up until 1967, three years before Forster’s tone Forster’s “Termal Note” is also important: The man hidn om his rears was some ways the real revelatn.

I wonred if Lnel Trillg, havg wrten the early important book on Forster, had any thoughts about Mrice, and what I found his llected letters was a note to Cynthia Ozick 1971, praisg her operatilly sthg review, to which he add, It might ame you to know that I me to the explic realizatn that he was homosexual.

“ALEC” NTU THE STORY OF E.M. FORSTER’S CLASSIC GAY NOVEL “MRICE”

The novel’s first journey 1952 om Forster England to Isherwood California saw passed hand to hand by a seri of gay men what Moffat lls a “pony exprs” unrtaken to protect om the Amerin Comstock laws that would have seized . The novel was not so fantastil after I profiled the gay btsellg Amerin novelist Gordon Merrick for Out Magaze 1997, his survivg lover, Charl Hulse, scribed how Forster had admirgly wrten to Merrick of his first novel, The Stmpet Wd, begng a rrponnce that had culmated at a hotel near Kg’s College, where Merrick was left wh a py of the mancript and read one night.

Gentlemen of a certa age iated young men to the sly yet pensatory elism of big cy culture—the opera, the philharmonic, the theater, mms, art galleri, classic cema, readg lists—and the later got, boys would be boys, boys would be the offsprg of the Beats, to a different kd of mic, a different kd of darkns, downtown, the East Village, where much of the New Wave was gay and all of high.

As well as cementg the unacceptabily of homosexualy the popular nscns, the imprisonment of London’s most famo and loved thor read like a utnary tale to Forster, stg a long shadow over his sexual maturatn and inty.

HOW MATTHEW LOPEZ TRANSFORMED “HOWARDS END” INTO AN EPIC PLAY ABOUT GAY LIFE

Dpe the passg of time and of dividuals (to whom he felt the revelatn of his homosexualy would hurt most), Forster believed there had been no profound progrsn sce the days of Wil’s nvictn, and thought that public attus had only crementally shifted, om ‘ignorance and terror to faiary and ntempt’.

Instead, he bequeathed the mancript of Mrice to Isherwood, and, a year after his ath, the love story clost to Forster’s heart was receptn of Forster’s gay leratureThe ial rponse to the publitn of Forster’s gay lerature was mixed, and often negative. As laws and attus towards homosexualy have bee more posive, and Queer Studi have flourished, his gay lerature has gone om beg anomalo to pneerg, om beg ignored to new lens has eply enriched our unrstandg of his heterosexual lerature too. Part of the challenge for Forster wrg this new genre of fictn was to fd the words and create a world where this type of relatnship uld be gay short stori are fed wh the fantastil and the mythil – past liv, phantasmagoria, transfiguratn are muddled to the ordary.