This was their life

Today I was trying to remember a quote about Boston, New York and Philadelphia. Turns out it was by Mark Twain: "In Boston they ask, how much does he know? In New York, how much is he worth? In Philadelphia, who were his parents?" What led me to this was quote was a reading of the bio of "E. M. Forster, A Great Unrecorded Life" by Wendy Moffat (I also want to read the unexpurgated autobiography of Mark Twain, vol. 1 was just published). What amazed me about Forster was the altering of my view of his life. Virginia Woolf, whose writing I admire, had her opinions of Forster (who was a friend) upended for me because of Moffat's book. Until I read that, I always remembered Woolf's comments on her friend ( "E. M. Forster the novelist, whose books once influenced mine, and are very good, I think, though impeded, shrivelled and immature" and her diary entry with Forster in mind, "The middle age of buggers is not to be contemplated without horror."). When I considered Forster's cessation of writing fiction and his hiding away of his gay writings, I always thought of him as a sad man who avoided his own truth.
Since reading the book, I find Forster a man who did abandon fiction and not publish his gay-themed stories and novel, but who grew in his concern and involvement for the world, broadcasting on the BBC during the war, attending international writers' conferences to address the world's peril that led up to WWII, and saving his work that dealt with homosexuality until such time as it would be received as not sensationalistic, but a reflection on his life and desires, as well as the gay life that existed before it could "speak its name."

OK, so what does Mark Twain and his Boston, New York and Philadelphia statement have to do with this? Forster's life was filled and interconnected with so many people, Christopher Isherwood, W.H. Auden, Benjamin Britten, Paul Cadmus, George Platt Lynes, etc. What a wonderful crowd of creative types.

Of late, I find myself drawn to biography; Before the Forster book I read a book called "My Queer War" about a gay soldier serving in WWII (and meeting Picasso and Gertrude Stein when stationed in Paris, connections again, right?); now I am reading Justin Spring's "Secret Historian," the life of professor, tattoo artist and sexual renegade Samuel Steward (also filled with connections, Gertrude Stein, Alfred Kinsey, andGeorge Platt Lynes to name a few)and Frances Osborne's "The Bolter," the scandalous Edwardian woman, Idina Sackville, which ties in to Virginia Woolf and that crowd.

I feel lucky (and sometimes a tad jealous) of my friends who maintain a creative level in their lives. I have been feeling uncreative and need to reconnect with that part of myself. Once I decide in what direction to go, I'll let you know.