A Conflicted Inheritance: The Opposing Styles of Wilde, Forster and Firbank in The Swimming-Pool Library

This chapter explores the importance of style in The Swimming-Pool Library (1988) in terms of an inheritance of earlier, influential gay literary voices, including most prominently those of Oscar Wilde, E.M. Forster and Ronald Firbank. I argue that while Hollinghurst initially establishes a Wildean stylistic framework, which imbues the novel with a combination of Gothic mystery, sensuality and sentimentality, in other ways he complicates this inflection, interpolating a more direct but also camp creative vision, comparable in different ways to the writing of Forster and Firbank. Indeed, I suggest that a dialogue between these voices runs throughout the novel, such that several scenes can be interpreted contrastingly in terms of opposing Wildean, Forsterian and Firbankian influences. Also, the novel invokes a critical exploration of these writers’ politics both in terms of queer identity, class-relations and colonialism. In the end, however, I suggest that it is desire that remains prevalent, reaffirming Firbank’s innuendo-laden and impressionistic approach to writing.