The Middle of the Journey

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. show more 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. show less