Lionel Trilling wrote in response to something I had published about Forster a long time ago. It was an astonishing letter. He said that he realized E. M. Forster was homosexual only years after he had completed his book on Forster’s work. It wasn’t an issue in the society at the time he was writing. The atmosphere didn’t lead anyone to think along those lines, and Trilling himself was unaware. —{Cynthia Ozick](https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2693/the-art-of-fiction-no-95-cynthia-ozick)