Maurice is one of the first gay movies I saw. I was with a friend last night and he had this VHS (hard to believe these things are still around) and we watched this together. It is such a great gay movie.

From IMDB:

Two male English school chums find themselves falling in love at Cambridge. To regain his place in society, Clive gives up his forbidden love, Maurice (pronounced "Morris") and marries. While staying with Clive and his shallow wife, Anne, Maurice finally discovers romance in the arms of Alec, the gamekeeper. Written from personal pain, it's E.M. Forster's story of coming to terms with sexuality in the Edwardian age.

A friend gave me the novel. I set it aside, but you have now given me the motivation to read it.

A friend gave me the novel. I set it aside, but you have now given me the motivation to read it.

I found that in book form the story was somewhat boring. I guess I needed the visuals.

I just finished reading a new biography of Forster called "A Great Unrecorded History", by Wendy Moffatt, which relates all of Forster's writing to his sexual orientation and experience, with lots of interesting background information about the composition history of "Maurice".

I just finished reading a new biography of Forster called "A Great Unrecorded History", by Wendy Moffatt, which relates all of Forster's writing to his sexual orientation and experience, with lots of interesting background information about the composition history of "Maurice".

Was it a good read? I loved Forster when I was in college and would read this if you thought it was a great read. A Room with a View and Howard's End were two of my favorite novels. I felt a great connection with him and his characters so many years ago.

Was it a good read? I loved Forster when I was in college and would read this if you thought it was a great read. A Room with a View and Howard's End were two of my favorite novels. I felt a great connection with him and his characters so many years ago.

I thought it was an excellent biography, with the full context of his sex life, which previous biographies of him, even by gay men (P.N. Furbank's is the best), tended to ignore or glide over with few details. It is a very long book; of course, it was a very long life, with no published fiction during the last forty-six years, because he felt he had to write honestly about homosex, which was the world he knew best, but didn't think he could publish that work. Some of it he destroyed, but some of it, like "Maurice," was published after his death when the climate changed. His personal relationships were fascinating, and he was sexually active into his old age (he was getting a lot more in his senior years than I am).

It is interesting that Forster's retreat into imagination is such a part of many of us who are gay. I remember my imagination carrying me through some very dark days in my youth and were it not for my dreams, my writing, my poetry, I am not sure how I would have survived those years. I think this escape into the arts is part of what has drawn me to so many of my lifelong friends as they were in the same world I was in at one point or another.