SOURCE: "Maurice and the Later Stories," in A Reading of E. M. Forster, The MacMillan Press, 1979, pp. 129-45.

In the following excerpt, Cavaliero praises the posthumously published short stories for their irreverent humor and satirical power.

Forster's late stories pose problems for the reader. His own valuation of them was confused. Although written, he said, 'not to express myself but to excite myself he felt that they were 'a wrong channel for my pen'. He burnt some of these stories in 1922; those that survive were either written later or were saved by the approval of his friends. They demand a certain suspension of accustomed sensitivity from such of his readers as may be inclined with Jeffrey Meyers to dismiss them as 'puerile, pathetic, sentimental and thoroughly unimaginative fantasies' [Homosexuality and Literature, 1977]. But, read sympathetically, they are not pornographic, though one or two are decidedly and cheerfully erotic. All...