The Story
Life in time and life by values
Explain the 'double allegiance' and why a novel must keep a clock.
In daily life, Forster says, we live by time: we know that one thing happens after another. But we also live by 'value', which is measured not by minutes but by intensity: how much something means to us.
When someone says that a meeting lasting only five minutes was 'worth it', they show both loyalties at once: to time (five minutes) and to value (worth it).
A story tells only the life in time. A good novel adds the life by values as well.
But a novelist can never deny time completely. Emily Brontë tried to hide the clock, Laurence Sterne turned it upside down, and Marcel Proust kept moving its hands about; but in every novel, the clock is still there.
In life, we may forget the clock; in a novel, we cannot.
Forster's lectures were talkative on purpose. Words like 'I', 'you', 'of course' and 'so to speak' mark them as a talk to an audience, not a formal essay.
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