(listen to episode on Spotify)
(music: echoey bells)
Gretchen:
Hello everyone, this is Chrononauts, a science fiction literature history podcast. I'm Gretchen, joined by my co-hosts, Nate and J.M. This episode is covering the family and fertility, with this specific segment discussing E.M. Forster's "Little Imber". Check the previous segments for discussion on David Keller's "Unto Us a Child is Born" and Judith Merrill's "That Only a Mother".
We have covered E.M. Forster on this podcast before, around a year ago, when we discussed his short story "The Machine Stops". The episode covering that story has much more in-depth background on the author than I will provide here. At the time that we were reading for that episode, we had believed that "The Machine Stops" was Forster's only forray into the genre of science fiction, which is the common opinion. However, while reading the biography of Forster by Wendy Moffat, we came across the mention of a story called "Little Imber". According to Moffat, this was his final short story, which he began writing at the age of 82, one she describes as a cross between D.H. Lawrence and Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale". An intriguing description.
Nate:
Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned D.H. Lawrence because there is a scene in this that directly reminds me of one of the scenes in "Women in Love", and I will mention that when we get to that. But yeah, that was one thing that I noticed immediately.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I have not read much of Lawrence yet, but I have read a little bit of commentary on "Little Imber", so I believe I know which scene that is.
Nate:
Yeah, we'll see if it's the same one, yeah. Yeah.
Gretchen:
But "Little Imber" was one of the many works that Forster wrote or started writing during the later part of his life that were only published posthumously. This is mostly due to their touching upon the subject of homosexuality. The most notable of these works is the novel "Maurice", which is actually the first work I read by Forster.
JM:
That one sounds interesting. Is it as, I don't know how to, it's not blatant, but as it is like, or what is this one?
Gretchen:
No, no. I mean, there's definitely, it is a little more, what's the word I'm looking for? I guess a little less crass than this one is. It's a really good novel. And I think it's a little more, he did write that one, I believe it was 1917. So this was still when he was younger and I think a little more cautious about what he was writing, even if it wasn't published.
JM:
I mean, this is definitely both the gayest and probably the naughtiest thing that we've done on the podcast yet.
Nate:
Yeah, I would say so, even more so than the Jarry. Like I mentioned during the teaser during the last episode, this very much reminds me of John Waters at his peak in the 70s of "Pink Flamingos" and "Female Trouble", "Desperate Living" that kind of stuff with a dash of like the Troma stuff later on in the 80s. It's very, very over the top. And I was definitely kind of surprised to see that from Forster and just in science fiction at all, really, from this time period. It's not really something I expected to encounter.
JM:
Yeah, it's quite remarkable too, because like "The Machine Stops" was so sort of sui generis and like ahead of its time. He never wrote that much stuff like that. And yeah, this I mean, I guess in a way it resembles some other stuff you might have seen in the 60s, but probably it would have been like more heterosexual. I guess I'm guessing.
Gretchen:
There's some like maybe something from like Delaney or you know, there are some other writers that might have written similar things to this. I feel like I've read Dhalgren and there's a couple of scenes that feel a little, maybe not as tongue and cheek as some of the stuff in this similar in content.
JM:
Yeah, it's definitely more tongue and cheek than actually erotic, I would say.
Nate:
Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
JM:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah. This was the first thing that I read during the month of June. So what a way to kick off pride month.
JM:
Oh, yeah.
Gretchen:
I did want to mention that this story, it is unfinished, and it is really hard to find. And the only version of it that we were able to discover was from a collection of Forster's fiction from 1981 called "Arctic Summer and Other Fictions", which is now out of print. Before I found it through internet archive, luckily it is available there. I could only find copies of it for like 40 bucks on various eBay and Amazon and stuff. Luckily, like I said, it is on internet archive if people are interested in seeking it out.
Nate:
Yeah, I don't know. Did you get the sense that this was like transcribed from a handwritten version of this?
Gretchen:
Yeah.
Nate:
Because there's like some notes in the anthology where they had trouble deciphering a word here and there or something like that.
Gretchen:
It feels like it was like a handwritten manuscript that they were copying, which does feel right because I know that I believe it was Christopher Isherwood was among the people who who...
JM:
Might have appreciated it. Right. They were the ones that I think found Maurice after Forster died and they were I think among the people who helped publish it. So I think that they might have transcribed it or people they were working with.
Nate:
Yeah, interesting.
JM:
And this just does have a feeling of something that he might have like, I don't know, maybe somebody somebody was like ribbing him about something or whatever. And he just like got this crazy old man urge and he took a piece of paper and started scrawling away and a couple hours later, he's like, here, have a look at this. And he just did it, right?
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
And I don't know, by the sound of it, he wasn't writing a lot by this time. By the 60s.
Gretchen:
Yeah, he has several... And this is because, you know, he finished, I believe it was "Passage to India", if I'm remembering correctly, that was his last work, which was back in like the 20s. And he stopped writing after that novels and stories, at least. But he did continue to write other works he just didn't publish. And I do wonder if some of the other works are as risque as "Little Imber" is.
Nate:
I mean, it definitely makes you wonder, especially if he left a whole mess of like, unpublished notes and papers floating around, makes you wonder how much survives out there that just hasn't been published in any form yet.
Gretchen:
Yeah. Well, there's really not much to "Little Imber". It is a pretty short work. So I don't know if I should get right into it.
Nate:
Yeah, why don't we do that?
JM:
Discuss our thoughts.
Nate:
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I would just say that this is another great one. And if you like ridiculous over the top stuff, definitely, definitely read this one.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I really love this one.
JM:
Yeah, it was pretty fun. I don't know, a couple weeks ago, I was at my mother's place, appropriately enough, I guess. And it was sort of a weird weekend, because we were we're celebrating the life of her partner of over 30 years who passed. And so there's a big gathering coming the next day. But I was, I don't know, not my own bed. And I guess my sleep patterns have been weird lately. So that night, I read probably the last quarter of "Children of Men". And this story and "That Only a Mother" like, all that one night, they'd probably stayed awake till 330 in the morning or something like that.
Gretchen:
Yeah, the tonal whiplash of that.
JM:
Yeah, this one was last and it was very appropriate to be reading last somehow is like, yeah, it's, it's like, it feels right to be reading this at three in the morning.
Gretchen:
"Little Imber" takes place in a world where the population is dwindling as increasingly more women are born than men. Because of this, fertile men are sent from places called nurseries to sleep with women to continue the human race. One such man, an older gentleman given the name of Warham, arrives in an area with a birth house where a dozen women organized under a woman known as the Abbess waits, wait for him.
However, another man, a younger, rougher man named Imber arrives at the same time as him. This new man arouses jealousy, pun intended, in Warham, who is afraid of being accused of impotency. And also of the extinction of the human race, which is the primary concern, of course.
Nate:
Right.
Gretchen:
He's also, yes, that's what he's mainly concerned about. He's also insulted by little Imber's lower class, where men like him to rejuvenate the species. Alone, away from the women, Imber comes into Warham's room, having lost his way while navigating his allotted half of the birth house, trying to prove their fitness, their masculinity to each other, the two undress and show themselves off.
They begin to wrestle, which transforms into a tryst, and they both, to put it bluntly, they ejaculate.
Nate:
This is a very DH Lawrence scene right here.
Gretchen:
Yeah. This was the scene that was described as very Lawrence-esque.
Nate:
Yeah, he doesn't quite go as far as Forster does here with them, you know, both finishing together, but it's very, very homoerotic in the way that Lawrence writes it. And it's certainly the one scene that sticks out the most from that novel, I think.
Gretchen:
Afterwards, Imber leaves and so does Warham, once he has prepared to meet with the women. He chooses one of them and takes her to a private room where they make love. There's a brief moment where he thinks he will be inadequate, but things finish smoothly, though only after he thinks of Imber. He returns to his room, only to find that the semen left on the floor has changed, and in his alarm finds Imber to show him. They see it move, and Imber reasons that it is life, and they should keep it alive, as their duty is to create life if they can.
Unfortunately, the being dies shortly after, and Imber weeps for it. The two agree to sleep together and try to conceive of such life again. Here, the story as a note in forms breaks off, leaving only a disconnected concluding passage, which I'm just going to read off.
"And from that swaddling a babe burst, the first of the new strain. The sorority cherished it, but what it really desired was its own younger brother. It felt sure there must be one. There was, they met and then things hummed. Retiring to a pagan grove, the whereabouts of which they concealed, they perfected their technique and produced Romuloids and Remoids in masses. It was impossible to walk in that countryside without finding a foundling, or to leave two together without finding a third. The women were stimulated and began to conceive normally as of old, their sons got raped by the wild boys and buggered their daughters who bore sons, the pleasing confusion increased and the population graph shot up until it hit the jackpot. Males had won."
What a wild story.
Nate:
Real beautiful writing there. Yeah.
JM:
So the two men are able to achieve what 21st century science is still not managed, and they're able to do it without the aid of any technology whatsoever.
Nate:
Just a dirty floor.
JM:
Just a dirty floor, yeah, and a bunch of spunk.
Gretchen:
Yeah. And a lot of wrestling.
JM:
Yeah. Yeah.
Nate:
Yeah. I love this. This is great.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
Nate:
Ridiculous over the top. Really funny. And yeah, I just did not expect this kind of story to be coming on the podcast. And yeah, a lot of fun. It does fit into the themes very well of tonight. And it does touch on some serious issues in interesting ways. I think the issue of class, you know, gentlemanly versus the uncouth youth.
Gretchen:
Yes.
JM:
I think it's also making fun of the trope there where it's like the old guy from the old upper classes like secretly wanting this dirty stud, like he just really thinks that that's the best thing ever. But he's not allowed to say anything about it, right? That he would never say anything about it, or admit it. But that's what he wants. And so yeah...
Gretchen:
Because well, I didn't specify that when Warham can only achieve climax when thinking of Imber, it's because he's thinking of Imber saying 'fuck', you know, it's so dirty, he just wants the roughness of that.
JM:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
What's interesting is that "Maurice" also kind of does this in a much, again, a much more sentimental and a little, it's not played as much for irony or anything, but it is this love story of a man who is a more upper class falling for, you know, a less gentlemanly character.
JM:
Right. So Forster himself was more of an upper class man, though, right?
Gretchen:
Yes.
JM:
Yes. So that kind of makes sense. So like, it kind of feels like, I mean, he was pretty old when he wrote this too, he kind of feel like maybe he's going through that now. It's the 60s, and it's more liberated. And he can kind of say what he wants. And he's letting it out. And like, it's really funny. It's kind of like, well, how are we going to solve the fertility problem? And he's going, I don't know, maybe a little more man love, that would solve the problem. And sure enough, it does. So yeah.
Nate:
Certainly the repressed desire plays up in a lot of his other works as well, at least as it makes his appearance and "Passage to India" as well. I guess you don't really see it in "Machine Stops" that is kind of devoid of these interpersonal relationships and feelings.
Gretchen:
Which I, you know, does make sense for what the story is.
Nate:
Yeah, definitely.
Gretchen:
It's a very depersonalized world.
Nate:
Yeah. But, yeah, not here. And it's definitely a lot of fun, the way he plays with these tropes. Even the, I guess, mockery of religiosity of the so-called Abbess, who isn't really associated with any religious order. She's just kind of like, assuming that role socially.
Gretchen:
Yeah. Well, I think it's more that the narrative just sort of chooses that name.
Nate:
Right. Yeah.
Gretchen:
And I mean, of course, with the birth house and the way that's arranged, she's more of like the matron of like brothel.
Nate:
Right. Exactly.
JM:
Yeah. Right. And there's another thing where I was, so we're in the 60s. We're now in the time of free love. And by the way, bringing this back to our science fiction communities, but some of the new wave stuff is pretty filthy too, right? So, but we're in the 60s. And so it's love is in the air and acceptance and openness and all that. And no doubt, Forster, even though, you know, he's a man of the old school in some ways, he feels that. And so, but he's also kind of thinking into the head and being like, oh, yeah, what situation would so many virile heterosexual men would like? They would like this religious order of all female nuns who they're like the opposite of the straight, like straight lace nuns that we all knew in our youth. These ones actually promote promiscuity and they want to sleep with all the boys. And like, what if the one secret old boy, you know, the one veteran left behind and he's like the old stud, the old venerable stud, he's secretly unhappy, and he secretly wants something completely different. Even if he does like the ladies sometimes, he has to think about something else in order to get his pleasure. And it's that that thing that was formerly forbidden, that is now not forbidden, and he can be open about it.
So I don't know, it would have kind of been interesting to see a progression up to this point of Forster, but I guess this was something totally different from a lot of his published work. Really just, yeah, writing this ribald tale for his buddies and his friends.
Nate:
It's interesting you were mentioning that just now. It kind of reminded me just you saying that of almost an inversion of that classic, not an inversion, but more of a subversion of that classic story from Boccaccio's the Decameron, where this one guy plays dumb basically to sleep his way through an entire abbey of nuns. But yeah, here it's a little bit different what the character was.
JM:
Huh, I got to read that.
Gretchen:
Here it's his duty, and he doesn't really want to do it.
Nate:
Right, exactly, yeah.
JM:
Yeah, definitely interested in checking out Decameron.
Gretchen:
Yeah, me too.
Nate:
Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff in that.
JM:
Yeah, but yeah, there's another short one. So I don't know, I don't think one needs to take it too seriously, but it was very entertaining. Yeah, certainly cool to see this angle because overall, the stories tonight are pretty heterosexually focused. So it is kind of nice to see something different.
Nate:
Yeah, yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah, this one, it is interesting to see the way that the family and gender roles and everything in this one are just completely sort of overturned and not really dealt with as some of the other stories we've been looking at here.
JM:
Yeah, I really like this aspect of all this because we do get a glimpse into several different worlds this episode. And this is a look at some alternative stuff that will maybe look more into as we get more into the 60s and 70s and so on. And I'm definitely interested in covering more, yeah, like more of a new way of stuff, more, yeah, like more authors who, I guess, write about sex in ways that were not necessarily something you'd expect from the 20s, 30s and 40s and so on, and gay authors and so on. Yeah, this is interesting. A lot of perspectives to look into. And I definitely think this whole topic is something we'll probably come back to in roundabout ways as we go through Chrononauts.
Nate:
Yeah, I definitely do, yeah.
Gretchen:
I also would really like to read the other stories in that "Arctic Summer" and see if the writing is similar in those stories, if there's similar styles within those other works.
JM:
Yeah, so is it all later stuff?
Gretchen:
I think it is all of the stuff that wasn't published, like the later works that he wrote. I think most of them are regarding homosexuality and exploring his identity as like a gay man.
Nate:
Interesting, yeah.
JM:
Cool, yeah. Well, I definitely have to read more of his classics, but that's maybe something I'll come back to. A lot of his stuff seems good. I mean, I was really, I had some misgivings, like mostly in terms of one or two specific things that I think I mentioned at the time, but I really like "The Machine Stops" a lot. It's a really well written story, so definitely was interested in, I said at the time, checking out "Passage to India" "Room with a View" and a couple of the other ones, so yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah, yeah, "Passage to India" is really good.
Nate:
Well, it's certainly two for two for me on Chrononauts.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
All right, well, we do have a longer work to cover and we have chosen a rather famous one, "The Children of Men", by P. D. James. So, after we come back, we can discuss that work.
Bibliography:
Moffat, Wendy - "A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster" (2010)
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