Indirections of the Novel: James, Conrad, and Forster

By 'indirections', Kenneth Graham means 'the deployment of a radically new openness, obliquity, and contradictoriness of narrative forms, both in the large-scale movements and in the smallest details of descriptive language, scene, and dialogue'. The three masters of indirection in the early modern novel are Henry James, Joseph Conrad and E. M. Forster. Though very different from each other, each employs a technically innovative style which articulates a response to a world of uncertainty a...