Most writers battle with periods of being blocked; it's almost an occupational hazard. But in the writing of his last and greatest novel, 'A Passage to India,' E. M. Forster got stuck for nine years.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I've been wanting to write a book about what goes into creating a novel, and the story behind 'A Passage to India' is especially interesting.
'Oscar Wao' for example cohered in a period of terrible distress. All the novels that I wanted to write were not happening.
I figure that that has a ten year cycle. At the end of that ten years, I began to get worried that I would run into what is known as the writer's block, the feeling of not being able to do these things.
I've never yet managed to write a novel which didn't have an Indian central character.
A Passage to India. It is my favourite movie.
I think that I altered history in 'Elizabeth,' and I interpreted history far more than Danny Boyle or Richard Attenborough did to 'Slumdog Millionaire' or 'Gandhi.' They took Indian novels or Indian characters and very much stayed within the Indian diaspora.
If India hadn't become a troubled space for me, somehow I wouldn't have any reason to write about it. So the fact that it's a lost love, or something, is why I keep thinking about it obsessively.
It is interesting that Nehru fought and kept saying that if you break India into languages, there is no end to it.
I can only remember two books from college that moved me: E.M. Forster's 'Howards End' and F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby.'
The Indian story has never been written. Maybe I am the man to do it.