II: The Story explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Time vs. Value

  Forster contrasts the life in time (chronological sequence) with the life by values (intensity, memory, anticipation), arguing the novel must include both but cannot abandon time.

• The Nature of Storytelling

  The chapter defines story as the lowest common denominator of all novels, a narrative of events in time sequence, and explores its primitive power to generate suspense.

• Art, Pattern, and Rhythm

  Forster discusses devices used by novelists to manipulate time (e.g., hiding, turning, altering the clock) as legitimate artistic techniques.

Characters to notice

• Sir Walter Scott

  Cited as the quintessential storyteller; Forster critiques his lack of passion and artistic detachment but acknowledges his ability to tell a story.

• Gertrude Stein

  Discussed as the novelist who tried to abolish time from fiction, pulverizing the clock, but failed because destroying time-sequence makes fiction unintelligible.

• Emily Brontë

  Mentioned as an author who tried to hide the clock in Wuthering Heights, a device to manipulate time in the novel.

• Sterne

  Referenced for turning the clock upside down in Tristram Shandy as a legitimate device to alter time sequence.

• Marcel Proust

  Noted for ingeniously altering the hands of the clock so his hero simultaneously entertains a mistress and plays ball with his nurse.

• Lovel

  The hero of Scott's The Antiquary, introduced as a young man of genteel appearance with a mystery about him.

Key passages

• “the basis of a novel is a story, and a story is a narrative of events arranged in time sequence.”

  The fundamental element of any novel is the story, which is simply a recounting of events in chronological order.

  Forster's core definition of story, distinguishing it from plot.

• “Daily life is also full of the time-sense. We think one event occurs after or before another, the thought is often in our minds, and much of our talk and action proceeds on the assumption.”

  Our everyday experience is steeped in a sense of time; we constantly think about events happening before or after others, and this shapes our conversations and behaviors.

  Forster connects the novel's time-sequence to ordinary human experience.

• “The life in time is so obviously base and inferior that the question naturally occurs: cannot the novelist abolish it from his work, even as the mystic asserts he has abolished it from his experience, and install its radiant alternative alone?”

  Because the chronological life seems so lowly, one might wonder if a novelist could eliminate it entirely, just as mystics claim to transcend time, and replace it with a purely value-driven existence.

  Forster poses the question that leads to his critique of Gertrude Stein's experiment.