The World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster and the Year that Changed Literature

By Bill Goldstein

A revelatory narrative charting the lives and works of legendary authors Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster and D. H. Lawrence during 1922, the birth year of modernism

'The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts,' the American author Willa Cather once wrote. Yet for Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster and D. H. Lawrence, 1922 began with a frighteningly blank page. Eliot was in Switzerland recovering from a nervous breakdown. Forster was grappling with unrequited love. Woolf and Lawrence, meanwhile, were both in bed with the flu. Confronting illness, personal problems and the spectral ghost of World War I, all four felt literally at a loss for words.

As dismal as things seemed, 1922 turned out to be a year of outstanding creative renaissance for them all. By the end of the year Woolf had started Mrs Dalloway, Forster had returned to work on A Passage to India, Lawrence had written his heavily autobiographical novel Kangaroo, and Eliot had finished – and published to great acclaim – 'The Waste Land'.

Full of surprising insights and original research, Bill Goldstein's The World Broke in Two chronicles the intertwined lives and works of these four writers in a crucial year of change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Sep 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781408894576

Bill Goldstein

Bill Goldstein is the founding editor of the The New York Times books website and the book critic for the weekend edition of WNBC's 'Today in New York'. He is also curator of public programs at Roosevelt House, the public policy institute of New York's Hunter College. A graduate of the University of Chicago, he received a PhD in English from City University of New York Graduate Center in 2010, and is the recipient of writing fellowships at MacDowell, Yaddo, Ucross and elsewhere. He lives in New York.

Reviews for The World Broke in Two

[wagner5sarah35 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The author presents the year 1922 as a pivotal one in literature and delves into what four major authors of the period were doing during this year. It's an interesting take on literature history, but I felt the author failed to really drive home his reason for why 1922 was so important. Certainly, it was interesting to see what Virginia Woolf was up to, to read about Forster's sad love affair with an Egyptian, and the court case for Lawrence's Women in Love, but what made all this so essential? And why didn't the author feature James Joyce, considering the number of references made to him and Ulysses in this book? So, I guess this book left me with more questions than answers, but it's definitely good for learning more about these influential authors.

[garykbookworm · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The aftermath of World War 1 was devastating to the entire world and it essentially destroyed an entire generation of young men. The question remaining for the literary artists (prose and poetry) was how to explain the impact to themselves and to the rest of the world. The old way of explaining things would not work anymore. Ezra Pound's mantra was "to make it new". The World Broke in Two by Bill Goldstein attempts to explain how four legendary writers dealt with this new "modernism" through many of their own letters and journals.James Joyce and Marcel Proust may have been the first writers to attempt this new writing with "Ulysses" and "In Search of Lost Time" and they had a profound affect on the entire body of these literary authors.The book takes you into the minds of these geniuses and how they were inspired and succeeded in their quest to answer the call to reinvent themselves. I learned two lessons from this book which I feel will help me in my further reading of classic literature. The first lesson is that it is important to read a short biography of the author before reading and the second lesson is to understand the era in which they were writing.They both make a huge difference in understanding the work of art.

[garyleejones · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Goldstein's _The World Broke in Two_ is a lively and engaging look at how literature changed around 1922--partly as a result of WWI, and partly as a result of Joyce's _Ulysses_. Although they did not all see Joyce's book as a complete success, Woolf, Lawrence, Forster, and Eliot all knew it had changed how books would be read and thus how they would be written. Goldstein does not simply describe the changes in writing, he gives us biographical insights into how these writers struggled with their own writing processes as they worked on new fiction. The book gives a thorough and detailed look at conversations and letters among the writers and their friends, editors, and families in (for the most part) 1922. Not much of the information is ground shaking and a lot is not even new, but it is an engaging book nevertheless for a student of literary modernism. Good book.

[tracyrowanauthor · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm a long-time reader of works by and about the Bloomsbury group and other writers and artists who were peripherally connected to it, so much of what's in this book was familiar to me. And yet there was much I learned, particularly about E. M. Forster. Either he has not been the subject of a good deal of bio-critical work, or I simply haven't noted and/or read the material, which is odd because he's been my consistent favorite author of the four dealt with here.I freely confess that most of the people who appear in this account are people I would not want to know, no matter how much I enjoy their work. Goldstein doesn't linger on their personality flaws quite as much as do other biographers, and yet the, ah, difficult quality of their personalities does show through. In fairness, Woolf had more than her share of mental and emotional issues to contend with, and Goldstein touches on those issues rather deftly, not lingering on them, but not dismissing them as either unimportant to Woolf's work, or some kind of hysteria. He is perhaps a bit less kind to Eliot who suffered from vague neurosis for many years, though it seemed as if it was largely due to having to work for a living, and having married a woman as neurotic as he was. Forster seems repressed and unhappy, a quiet, workmanlike writer. And Lawrence, as usual, comes across as unbearable. All that aside, Goldstein does an amazing job of providing the reader with a clear idea of what it's like to be a writer, the roadblocks and uncertainties, the painful self-doubt that often pairs with a sense that our work is possibly the most significant the world will ever know. In that respect alone this book is eye-opening.In a larger sense it gives the reader a view into the birth of modernism in literature. Though James Joyce and his master work, "Ulysses" is not directly examined here, it permeates the whole of the book. "Ulysses" was serialized from 1918 to 1920, and published in toto in 1922, the year referred to in the book's title. It was a book that changed the way writers viewed literature, and in fact the title of the book comes from a quote by Willa Cather who said that the world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts, referring to a sea change not only in literary style but substance as well. The subjects of this volume are aware of "Ulysses," they attempt to read it and are alternately impressed and infuriated by it, but do not remain unchanged by its existence. It becomes a kind of touchstone for contemporary writing, a path out of the old forms and into new ones. Each of the four writers Goldstein follows struggles with these changes, with their sense that there is something more they can do with their work, something greater, more modern, more meaningful. And by the end of 1922, they are all breaking through their blocks to create the works which moved them all into the modern era.Goldstein does a masterly job of blending both biographical and critical commentary, holding his focus on four writers and the space of one year, yet framing them with what was happening in the world as a whole, and the literary world, showing them in contact with and in relation to other writers such as Joyce, Proust, Pound, and others. It's not exactly what I'd call a good starting point for anyone who is not familiar with the work of these four writers, but if you are, it will expand your understanding of them and their work.

[laffrey_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Author Goldstein seeks to tell the story of a revolution in literature, by examining, what he considers to be, the seminal year in its development. The book presents the overlapping stories of T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, all struggling to overcome their personal demons and produce the most influential works of their careers in the shadow of Joyce's Ulysses. Does this conceit work? Maybe I don't have enough of a grounding in English Lit or maybe I'm just not enough of an Eliot fan (Goldstein spends an inordinate amount of time dissecting his travails in publishing The Waste Land), but I don't think so. Though he makes it obvious that the authors were well acquainted, on a professional and personal level, the stories so rarely converge that it's hard to keep one's place in the narrative. The relationship between Woolf and Forster (admittedly, my favorites of the 4) was enthralling, but the endless Eliot chapters were interminable.

[seriousgrace · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A great deal of important writing occurred in 1922. Joyce's controversial Ulysses was published in February and everyone wanted to read it. F. Scott Fitzgerald published in March. Proust's In Search of Lost Time and Sinclair Lewis's Babbit were published in September. It was a good year for children's books, too. The Velveteen Rabbit (Margery Williams) and Dr. Doolittle (Hugh Lofting) were both published in 1922. But, for Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster, and D.H. Lawrence 1922 started out primarily as an empty page, a blank stare, a "literary apocalypse" as Goldstein called it. All four suffered from a lack of inspiration; the dreaded writer's block. Shocking, as all had been successful in previous years. 1922 started with Virginia being perpetually ill with fevers well over one hundred degrees. Tom was busy being intimidated by James Joyce. Morgan was hung up on a relationship he started in India. Lawrence was trying to settle on the perfect place to write. The end of 1922 would see the emergence of Mrs. Dalloway and Jacob's Room, Eliot's epic poem, "The Waste Land" would be published in October amid scandal, Lawrence would share his autobiographical Kangaroo, and Forster finds inspiration in the start of A Passage to India.As an aside, I thoroughly enjoyed certain phrasings Goldstein used throughout his book. To name a few, "emotional slither" and "clawful enthusiasm." I can only hope the imagery I conjured up as a result of these word pairings is what Goldstein intended.

[msarki_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The web of all four writers hinges both on their mutual relationships and on the censorship issues of their time. A very interesting read and fascinating study for the literary ones among us. Well-written and easily engaged. On a personal note I did find Virginia Woolf imminently more interesting than the three men also intimately exposed.

[geoffsc-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It’s interesting to read about these authors together and at that time. It was post WWI, after the bad Spanish Flu, but bad flu epidemics came every year. All these authors seemed to be frustrated and lacking energy and motivation to get back into writing … Perhaps a similar period to us, now in our Covid-19 virus shut down, perhaps frustrated we can’t go out, wondering what to do with all this time?
Each of these authors is revealed in snippets from diaries, letters, reviews, highlighting their interactions, struggles and insights. A look behind the talents at the exposed real person.
It’s fascinating to peek into their lives and see their foibles, not just their advertised qualities.
It’s helpful that I have read Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and A Passage to India by E.M. Forster. I’ll have to read Elliot’s poem The Waste Land that he laboured over, and something of Lawrence's, when I’ve finished this book, to complete their pictures.

[musicformovies · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

'The World Broke in Two: ...the Year That Changed Literature' is a deeply moving book; perhaps it is because I'm in a creative field myself - a composer - that I can deeply relate to the struggles of all four authors depicted as they journey from the creation to the publication of their works. This book is as much a biography of the individual artists lives as it is about their creations; the time in which the lived; their relationships - both professional, personal, and often a mixture of both, their individual mental health - often in tatters, and - in one case - led to a tragic end - all of these details converge to a moving homage between two world wars that did indeed bring about a high point of Modernist literature. If you have ever read any work by Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, or E.M Forster, you owe it to yourself to pick up this book and learn more about the author. Highly recommended - both from a socio-biography perspective and a literary creative viewpoint.

[nancyadair-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Willa Cather pronounced that 'the world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts'. WWI had been one of the most devastating conflicts in world history, leaving 41 million dead. Those who survived combat returned home wounded in body and soul and mind. Vast stretches of Europe had been turned into a wasteland, leaving millions of refugees. The Victorian world view and values were irrelevant and archaic. A new world view was arising from the ashes.The World Broke in Two by Bill Goldstein presents the personal and artistic struggles of T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, and D. H. Lawrence to create literature that spoke to this changed world. James Joyce's Ulysses and the newly translated In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust were the literary sensations of the day. T. S. Eliot was a huge promoter of Joyce's book, which Lawrence found unreadable. Proust was a huge influence on Woolf, as was Eliot's poem The Waste Land which he had read aloud at her home. Forster was inspired by Proust. Each writer was searching for a new voice and vision."Well--what remains to be written after that?" Virginia Woolf after reading Proust in 1922The authors' personal lives were a mess.Eliot suffered a nervous breakdown and had an ill wife. He could not seem to let go of his poem The Wasteland and strung publishers along. He wore green tinted makeup to appear even more pathetic.It had been years since Forster's last published novel. He lived with his smothering mother and was sexually frustrated, longing for love. He escaped by taking a position in India. He fell in love with a younger, married man who played the lovestruck Forster. And then the man died. Forster was in grief, unable to finish what was to become his last novel, A Passage to India.Woolf was ill much of the year. She was trying to find a voice and style that was new. Mrs. Dalloway started as a minor character but was growing into her own novel. Goldstein writes that Joyce, Proust, and Eliot seemed to raise the question: "What connects it together?" Woolf sought to find "some sort of fusion" that was missing in Ulysses and The Waste Land.And Lawrence continued to wander the world with Frieda, his novels banned as obscene. They had left England in 1917, going to Australia, and then America. Invited to live in Taos, he determined to write an "American novel from that centre."The Waste Land was finally published late in the year, and a monetary prize was given to Eliot. He left his bank job to work for the publisher that became Faber and Faber. Forster's novel A Passage To India was published in 1924, dedicated to his beloved, and became a best seller. Lawrence published Aaron's Rod in 1922 and his Australian novel Kangaroo the following year. He became financially comfortable. Woolf's story Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street was published in 1923 and her novel Mrs. Dalloway in 1925.My first Forster book was A Passage to India. I discovered Eliot in my late teens. Woolf was a later happy discovery; I have also read several books about her life. Although I have not read Lawrence's novels I have enjoyed his stories and poetry. And, in college, I had an honors course on Joyce's Ulysses.With this background, I was very interested in learning about the relationship between these writers and how they were inspired by Joyce and Proust. I had not realized how much of Eliot's personal life can be found in The Wasteland, including clips of conversations. The oppression felt in the poem was very personal, rooted in his private life, as well as influenced by his contemporary world. Forster, Woolf, and Eliot suffered from depression and were emotionally fragile. Poor Forster, unable to be open about his sexual orientation, writing about love between men and women and longing for a fulfilling adult love of his own.A reviewer I read said she would not want to spend time with any of these writers. I found that sad. I am amazed to think what these authors accomplished considering the burdens they labored under, Eliot working in a dull office job, his loveless marriage and ill wife; lonely Forster staying with his overbearing mother; Woolf fighting depression; Lawrence driven from place to place with Frieda. All having seen a devastating war upend everything that seemed permanent.I found Goldstein's book an interesting read both as biography and as an examination of an important moment in literature.I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

[lauriebrown54 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

1922 was the year that ‘Ulysses’ was published and Proust’s work was translated into English. Willa Cather declared that the world broke in two in that year, because these were literary works that were distinctly different from all that had come before them. These works had effects on other writers, of course- Virginia Woolf said, after reading Proust “Well, what remains to be written after that?” Thankfully, after being unable to write due to illnesses both mental and physical, she found a new voice within her and created both “Jacob’s Room” and “Mrs. Dalloway”. T.S. Eliot felt trapped by both his day job at a bank and his invalid wife. His own neuroses did not help; he had a great deal of trouble letting go of his new work “The Wasteland” and was an incredible frustration to the people who wanted to publish the poem. D.H. Lawrence was traveling the world, trying to find a place where he felt he could write in peace. People seemed to be dying to have him stay with them, even though he was quite unreasonable about his situation, wanting to be put up by friends but also wanting to be left strictly alone. During this time he watched censorship battles being fought over his work, and published “Kangaroo” (which I had never heard of) and “Aaron’s Rod”. E.M. Forster had writer’s block for well over a decade, but in this year managed to finish a book he’d started long before: “A Passage to India”. His life was unhappy; a closeted gay man in an era that did not allow homosexuality, he did not want to suffer the same fate as Oscar Wilde. His mental outlook wasn’t helped by living with his aging, control freak mother. These four authors were affected by Joyce and Proust, even those who did not like the work they produced. They were also profoundly affected by the recent World War; “The Wasteland” and “Mrs Dalloway” both contain reactions to that. The entwined biographies of the four, and what they published in 1922, make a good picture of how modernist writing was being created. The book is not fast reading (I tended to skip over a good deal of Eliot’s parts) but it’s good writing and the research is meticulous. Four stars out of five.