One way to start a book

The first sentence…

Madeleine: I’ve got writer’s block at the first sentence.

Maurice: The start is crucial. The first sentence grabs the reader, sets the scene.

Madeleine: The writer is saying, in effect, attendez-moi, regarde ça?

Maurice: Forster’s Howards End began, “One might as well start with Helen’s letters to her sister.” Zadie Smith was impressed with that so she started her On Beauty with a brazen copy, “One may as well begin with Jerome’s e-mails to his father.”

A good start..

Madeleine: But my book is a book of reflections as I travel around Japan.

Maurice: Here’s just the thing. The opening of Soseki’s Kusa Makura: “As I was going up the mountain road, I thought of this."

Madeleine: So I should walk up a mountain road and be struck with a great realization?

Maurice: Good beginning. As I was walking up the mountain road, I had an epiphany.

__________

Voice-over

Maurice went on to say “Acknowledge if you borrow. As with Zadie Smith, a book of thoughts while traveling in Japan could benefit from a close reading of the original. And then decorate the story, take it in unexpected directions. And make sure it’s not just epiphanies, add some action.”

A friend like another brother

A reconnection…

Leonard: Just got a letter this morning. One from an old-time friend, T.E., I’d reached out to in my “only connect” campaign.

Virginia: Only connect? Sounds Forsterian.

Leonard: Walt Whitman originally. But I thought I’d better start reconnecting with old friends before health issues set a deadline making it impossible to write coherently any longer.

Virginia: So who has replied so far?

Here's to times past...

Leonard: Some haven’t responded. But T.E. did. Irrepressible letter writer, he always was.

Virginia: You go back far?

Leonard: T.E. is a year older than me. I’d worked in Saudi with him. We crossed the Rub' al-Khali in a convoy. My car broke down, he rescued us. Then he went all over the world, working in many countries, finally settling in the Portugal.

Virginia: A character then.

Leonard: Brilliant mind, great at business, sparkling conversationalist, huge heart.

_________

Voice-over

Sometimes we search beyond familial DNA for people who share our values, inspire us with their spirit, share the art of conversation with us. 

Sheila Natusch

Après no ordinary funeral…

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Stokes: Everyone had a different story about her. It wasn’t just that Sheila was a good listener, she pointed out different things to everyone.

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Hansard: I asked her about learning to write. She suggested E.M. Forster.

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Stokes: Interesting suggestion. They were on opposite sides of the world.

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Hansard: But they shared a style, a voice, a view of the world. A declaration followed by a delicate explanation.

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Stokes: Like surprises in a garden. In the middle of a herb garden filled with scents and wings, a rose.

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Hansard: She also did conversations.

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Stokes: Some. Forster was master of those clipped English exchanges. He was a novelist. She was a naturalist, a historian.

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Hansard: Mmm. His were word sketches of people talking in rooms. She described species and events through people. Writers whose insights sprang from twinkling intellects.

____________

Voice-over

Waving

Delicate of speech and writing, speaking half a dozen languages, yet even in her 80s would plunge in the cold Wellington seas for a swim every morning. Shelley-like, sailing her tiny boat up and down the waves reenacting shore landings of pioneers. Growing and knowing even the Latin names of plants in hers and others gardens. Amazing person, seeing good in everyone.

...

Deplorable Language

If you repeat the lie often enough…

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Hank: I feel insulted being addressed as if I were 6 years old.

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Depp: Insulted by libellous language?

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"EVERYONE knows…
they're BAD people… 
I alone can fix it.

Hank: No, being talked down to with overly simple expressions like, “She’s a very bad person,” and “They’re bad people.” Using unsupported sweeping generalizations like, “Everybody knows,” with no proof as to who says it. Or megalomanic pronouncements like, “I alone can fix it.” That’s how some people talk to kids.

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Depp: But it simplifies the message, it appeals to a certain swath of voters.

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Hank: Deplorables? Whoops, sorry. E.M. Forster wrote an essay called “Two Cheers for Democracy”. Forster understood the danger. “Two cheers for democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: There is no occasion to give three.” That’s what Forster said.

____________

Voice-over

Countless memes comparing Trump with Hitler (sometimes inadvisedly) have been circulating for months. But this comparison is about language use, attitudes, conspiracy theories and extremism. That is how Hitler started out. We are not comparing track records in heinous acts. People who don’t understand the dangers of conspiracy theories and extremism often dismiss non-adherents as educated elites. As if schooling was something to be ashamed of. In this case, a little education, a little knowledge of history, could nip a calamitous consequence in the bud.

...

Revisiting Forster’s Story and Plot

We all agree; it's better this way.

Market dictates plotline...

Marketing Consultant: We did a survey of a hundred people who watched the first episode. 78% said the queen should die a few days after the king died.

Writer: E.M. Forster said, “The king died and then the queen died.

The king died and then the queen died, of grief."

Marketing Consultant: Not any more. “The king died and then the queen died because everyone wanted her to.”

___________

Voice-over

Narrative theory is being rewritten.

A storyteller is not the only person who designs the events.

Audiences are seriously consulted.

Narrative becomes commercial through crowdsourcing.
...

Beethoven and goblins

Voice-over

Let’s have a go at adapting a work of literature into a film scenario. It’s not of the quality of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, but we all have to start somewhere.

“It will be generally admitted that Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.”

E.M. Forster. Howards End.

______________________________________________

 The Schlegels are irrepressible before the performance begins.

 ...

Aunt Juley: I do like the way it opens.

Margaret: Really, Aunt Juley. Heroes and shipwrecks? The third movement…

Helen: Yes, yes, the goblins… and then the elephants dancing…

Tibby: (score open upon his knees) But listen out for the transitional passage, the drum coming in.

...