{"id":2786,"date":"2005-04-07T18:10:52","date_gmt":"2005-04-07T22:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=2786"},"modified":"2015-05-17T08:29:06","modified_gmt":"2015-05-17T12:29:06","slug":"em-forster-on-the-pseudo-scholar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=2786","title":{"rendered":"EM Forster on the “pseudo-scholar”"},"content":{"rendered":"

An excerpt from EM Forster’s ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL<\/a>\"\"<\/i>. (I introduce what this book is about here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

In this excerpt, EM Forster takes on what he calls the “pseudo-scholar”. The pseudo-scholar can find employment in many different areas of literature (teaching, editing, etc.) – but it is when the pseudo-scholar becomes a critic that EM Forster finds him most “pernicious”. You’ll recognize the type immediately.<\/p>\n

Here, again, you will see EM Forster’s distaste for chronology.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It is when he comes to criticism — to a job like the present — that he can be so pernicious, because he follows the method of a true scholar without having his equipment. He classes books before he has understood or read them; that is his first crime. Classification by chronology. Books written before 1847, books written after it, books written after or before 1848. The novel in the reign of Queen Anne, the prenovel, the ur-novel, the novel of the future. Classification by subject matter — sillier still. The literature of Inns, beginning with Tom Jones<\/i>; the literature of the Women’s Movement, beginning with Shirley<\/i>; the literature of Desert Islands, from Robinson Crusoe <\/i>to The Blue Lagoon<\/i>; the literature of Rogues — dreariest of all, though the Open Road runs it pretty close; the literature of Sussex (perhaps the most devoted of the Home Counties); improper books — a serious though dreadful branch of inquiry, only to be pursued by pseudo-scholars of riper years, novels relating to industrialism, aviation, chiropody, the weather.<\/p>\n

I include the weather on the authority of the most amazing work on the novel that I have met for many years. It came over the Atlantic to me, nor shall I ever forget it. It was a literary manual entitled Materials and Methods of Fiction<\/i>. The writer’s name shall be concealed. He was a pseudo-scholar and a good one. He classified novels by their dates, their length, their locality, their sex, their point of view, till no more seemed possible. But he still had the weather up his sleeve, and when he brought it out, it had nine heads. He gave an example under each head, for he was anything but slovenly, and we will run through his list. In the first place, weather can be “decorative”, as in Pierre Loti; then “utilitarian”, as in The Mill on the Floss<\/i> (no Floss, no Mill; no Mill, no Tullivers); “illustrative” as in The Egoist<\/i>; “planned in preestablished harmony,” as by Fiona MacLeod; “in emotional contrast,” as in The Master of Ballantrae<\/i>; “determinative of action,” as in a certain Kipling story, where a man proposes to the wrong girl on account of a mud storm; a “controlling influence,” Richard Feverel<\/i>; “itself a hero”, like Vesuvius in The Last Days of Pompeii<\/i>; and ninthly, it can be “non-existence”, as in a nursery tale. I liked him flinging in nonexistence. It made everything so scientific and trim. But he himself remained a little dissatisfied, and having finished his classification he said yes, of course there was one more thing, and that was genius; it was useless for a novelist to know there are nine sorts of weather, unless he has genius also. Cheered by this reflection, he classified novels by their tones. There are only two tones, personal and impersonal, and having given examples of each he grew pensive again and said, “Yes, but you must have genius too, or neither tone will profit.”<\/p>\n

This constant reference to genius is another characteristic of the pseudo-scholar. He loves mentioning genius, because the sound of the word exempts him from trying to discover its meaning. Literature is written by geniuses. Novelists are geniuses. There we are; now let us classify them. Which he does. Everything he says may be accurate but all is useless because he is moving round books instead of through them, he either has not read them or cannot read them properly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“the sound of the word exempts him from trying to discover its meaning”<\/p>\n

Still true. I’ve seen that “genius” thing used time and time again. Funny.<\/p>\n

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