Yes—oh dear yes—the novel tells a story

In 'The Story', from E.M. Forster's lectures on the novel, Forster asks: what does a novel do? He imagines three people answering.

• A vague bus driver answers uncertainly that he supposes it tells a story.
• An aggressive golfer says it tells a story, of course: he wants only a good story, and nothing else.
• The third voice is Forster's own, sadly agreeing: 'Yes, oh dear, yes, the novel tells a story.'

The story, Forster says, is the basic aspect of every novel. But he wishes it were something higher, like melody, or the perception of truth.

He calls the story the novel's backbone, or even a tape-worm, because its beginning and end are arbitrary: it could start or stop almost anywhere.

Stories go back a very long way, to the Stone Age, when tired listeners sat round a campfire. They stayed awake only through suspense, wanting to know what would happen next. If they guessed the ending, they fell asleep, or even killed the storyteller.

The story is the oldest and simplest part of a novel.