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Published in 1947, as the cold war was heating up, Lionel Trilling’s only novel was a prophetic reckoning with the bitter ideological disputes that were to come to a head in the McCarthy era. The Middle of the Journey revolves around a political turncoat and the anger his action awakens among a group of intellectuals summering in Connecticut. The story, however, is less concerned with the rights and wrongs of left and right than with an absence of integrity at the very heart of the debate. Certainly the hero, John Laskell, staging a slow recovery from the death of his lover and a near-fatal illness of his own, comes to suspect that the conflicts and commitments involved are little more than a distraction from the real responsibilities, and terrors, of the common world. A detailed, sometimes slyly humorous, picture of the manners and mores of the intelligentsia, as well as a work of surprising tenderness and ultimately tragic import, The Middle of the Journey is a novel of ideas whose quiet resonance has only grown with time. This is a deeply troubling examination of America by one of its greatest critics.… (altro)
Well-written at the sentence level, of course. Trilling’s characterisation shows you rather than tells you. Some interesting use of flashback at the beginning before it settles into a plodding narrative of a summer holiday of a few weeks’ duration. I read this out of interest in American Communism and particularly Whittaker Chambers, who is the model for a major character in the novel. But I found it a terrible book: endless navel-gazing by a group of East Coast academics and intellectuals whose life of privilege leaves them with way too much free time on their hands. An obvious, if unacknowledged, Freudian substructure. Plot, such as it is, completely contrived. No ending. Fortunately the novel was a one-off on Trilling's part.
The Middle of the Journey is a novel of ideology and ideas. Written in 1947 and set in the years just preceding, it details the lives of several characters, including a protagonist, John Laskell, who is conflicted about his life, his friends and the ideology that influences them. His friend Gifford Maxim has left the Communist Party and the book contains dialogues among the characters and him about this, and other seemingly more mundane matters, which take up most of the story. Exceptionally well-written, with literary references, symbolism (undoubtedly much of which I did not grasp) and slowly-built suspense, this singular novel by the noted essayist, educator and critic Lionel Trilling, is a challenging and interesting book to read. While Trilling, according to the introduction to the NYRB Classics edition, was impressed by the work of Faulkner and Hemingway among American writers, I found his style reminded me more of the early Henry James. ( )
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To Diana [author's wife]
Incipit
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When the train reached Westport, Gifford Maxim gave not the slightest sign that he had come to his destination.
Citazioni
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"And never has there been so much talk of liberty while the chains are being forged. ... It is the hope of power, the desire to bring his ideas to reality by imposing them on his fellow man. ... How can we possibly be guilty when we have in mind the welfare of others, and of so many others."
Ultime parole
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The creel would not fit on the rack with the bags, nor would the bowl, so he kept these on the seat beside him.
Published in 1947, as the cold war was heating up, Lionel Trilling’s only novel was a prophetic reckoning with the bitter ideological disputes that were to come to a head in the McCarthy era. The Middle of the Journey revolves around a political turncoat and the anger his action awakens among a group of intellectuals summering in Connecticut. The story, however, is less concerned with the rights and wrongs of left and right than with an absence of integrity at the very heart of the debate. Certainly the hero, John Laskell, staging a slow recovery from the death of his lover and a near-fatal illness of his own, comes to suspect that the conflicts and commitments involved are little more than a distraction from the real responsibilities, and terrors, of the common world. A detailed, sometimes slyly humorous, picture of the manners and mores of the intelligentsia, as well as a work of surprising tenderness and ultimately tragic import, The Middle of the Journey is a novel of ideas whose quiet resonance has only grown with time. This is a deeply troubling examination of America by one of its greatest critics.
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