SOURCE: "E. M. Forster," in Supernatural Fiction Writers, Vol. I, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1985, pp. 479-84.

In the following excerpt, Kessel argues that Forster used fantasy elements to clarify his belief that human salvation depends on the ability of people to connect.

You will expect me now to say that a fantastic book asks us to accept the supernatural. .. . I would rather hedge as much as possible, and say that [it asks] us to accept either the supernatural or its absence.

This passage from E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel (1927) illuminates both Forster's fantasy and his characteristic reticence about making unequivocal judgments. For in Forster we have a writer who does not care about the supernatural except as it can be used in fiction to illuminate how human relationships fail through a lack of emotional development.

The quotation comes from a chapter in which Forster defends fantasy as...