BIB_ID
195274
Accession number
MA 4672
Creator
Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan), 1879-1970.
Display Date
Place not specified, 1943.
Credit line
Purchased, 1990.
Description
1 item (9 pages) ; 25.3 x 20.0 cm.
Notes
Written at the top of the first page, in pencil and in an unknown hand, "Some Books" 31.3.43" and then in ink to the right of that "To be returned / to Room 310 Oxford / St."
Written in the pencil on the verso of the final page "Eastern Service (Red) / 31st March, 1943 / 11:15-11:30 GMT.
This essay is part of the series of BBC Talks Forster delivered between 1929 and 1960.
Written in the pencil on the verso of the final page "Eastern Service (Red) / 31st March, 1943 / 11:15-11:30 GMT.
This essay is part of the series of BBC Talks Forster delivered between 1929 and 1960.
Provenance
Purchased on the Gordon N. Ray Fund, 1990.
Summary
Being an autograph manuscript, with revisions and corrections, for a radio talk given on 31 March 1943 in the "Some Books" series on the Far Eastern Service, Red Network; setting out his reasons for ranking Proust's "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu" as the second greatest novel after Tolstoy's "War and Peace", "...the greatest novel which western civilisation has produced;" offering advice to those who will attempt to read the work after hearing the talk: "Be patient with him. He does not go with a swing, and very gradually draws you into his mesh. And be intelligent. It is so easy to read books stupidly, not with our full powers, and Proust makes no concessions to stupidity. Some writers--and they are great writers--do make concessions. Dickens does, for instance, and even Tolstoy does. Proust doesn't. He expects a constant awareness, both from the mind and from the senses."
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