Before closing we should acknowledge what now seem as shortcomings of Aspects of the Novel. The book does not discuss precisely the means by which life is transformed into art and would benefit from separate chapters on form and narrative technique and more detailed discussion of style, the reader's role, and setting. Sometimes Forster provides us with little more than an impressionistic, gustatory statement of like and dislike. But lyricism is not the same as argument, and his credo that "the final test of a novel will be our affection for it" is a bit tautological. At times, his generalizations need more precise evidence and tauter supporting argument. Clearly, he is ambivalent about the critical enterprise and worried that it is too scientific, even mechanistic. For this reason, he speaks of holding up "story" with a "forceps" (as if it were a part of Tristram Shandy's anatomy...