Re: the tragic ending, I stand by my impression that it was tidy. Intentionally so, the book was already long enough, and it caps off the mood well! But yes, there’s a story in which Rickie gets to live and must reckon with (re)building relationship old and new. How he might have related to his Aunt, for example! And I think some of that might have gone a little ways towards dealing with at least one of the significant questions that I picked up from the novel—I don’t quite know what Forster envisioned as the practice of living a ‘real’ life. I do know what he thought was fake! That’s quite detailed. What significant questions did you get from the story? I’m very curious about what things felt especially unsettled or unfinished to you.
Also I very much want to know more about what you mean by: “It's still meaningful in a way the triumphantly happy ending of a Maurice never could be.” While I certainly enjoyed many elements of Maurice, by biggest takeaway from that was “Clive Durham was done dirty (I love him),” and that was not the intended message of that book! Whereas TLJ was much more sticky, and I agree, I just adored Rickie (whereas I didn’t care for Maurice as the protagonist).
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Re: the tragic ending, I stand by my impression that it was tidy. Intentionally so, the book was already long enough, and it caps off the mood well! But yes, there’s a story in which Rickie gets to live and must reckon with (re)building relationship old and new. How he might have related to his Aunt, for example! And I think some of that might have gone a little ways towards dealing with at least one of the significant questions that I picked up from the novel—I don’t quite know what Forster envisioned as the practice of living a ‘real’ life. I do know what he thought was fake! That’s quite detailed. What significant questions did you get from the story? I’m very curious about what things felt especially unsettled or unfinished to you.
Also I very much want to know more about what you mean by: “It's still meaningful in a way the triumphantly happy ending of a Maurice never could be.” While I certainly enjoyed many elements of Maurice, by biggest takeaway from that was “Clive Durham was done dirty (I love him),” and that was not the intended message of that book! Whereas TLJ was much more sticky, and I agree, I just adored Rickie (whereas I didn’t care for Maurice as the protagonist).