What do you think?
Rate this book
The Longest Journey
E. M. Forster once described The Longest Journey as the book "I am most glad to have written." An introspective novel of manners at once comic and tragic, it tells of a sensitive and intelligent young man with an intense imagination and a certain amount of literary talent. He sets out full of hope to become a writer, but gives up his aspirations for those of the conventional world, gradually sinking into a life of petty conformity and bitter disappointments.
396 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1907
257 people are currently reading
4308 people want to read
About the author
E.M. Forster
695 books4,263 followersEdward Morgan Forster, generally published as E.M. Forster, was an English novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society. His humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: "Only connect".
He had five novels published in his lifetime, achieving his greatest success with A Passage to India (1924) which takes as its subject the relationship between East and West, seen through the lens of India in the later days of the British Raj.
Forster's views as a secular humanist are at the heart of his work, which often depicts the pursuit of personal connections in spite of the restrictions of contemporary society. He is noted for his use of symbolism as a technique in his novels, and he has been criticised for his attachment to mysticism. His other works include Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908) and Maurice (1971), his posthumously published novel which tells of the coming of age of an explicitly gay male character.
He had five novels published in his lifetime, achieving his greatest success with A Passage to India (1924) which takes as its subject the relationship between East and West, seen through the lens of India in the later days of the British Raj.
Forster's views as a secular humanist are at the heart of his work, which often depicts the pursuit of personal connections in spite of the restrictions of contemporary society. He is noted for his use of symbolism as a technique in his novels, and he has been criticised for his attachment to mysticism. His other works include Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908) and Maurice (1971), his posthumously published novel which tells of the coming of age of an explicitly gay male character.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 308 reviews
November 3, 2024
CRESCENDO
Il romanzo è ambientato nel Wiltshire.
Nella esigua produzione di narrativa di E.M.Forster (sei titoli – invece, molti più dedicati alla saggistica), questo è il romanzo meno noto. Il suo secondo, il suo preferito, quello che gli era più caro. Uno di quelli più autobiografici: direi che su questo versante solo Maurice si spinge oltre.
Ed è l’unico rimasto senza adattamento cinematografico e televisivo.
Il protagonista studia in un’università di quelle, parole dello stesso Forster, che formano ragazzi con il corpo ben sviluppato, la mente discretamente sviluppata e il cuore completamente atrofizzato.
Facile intuire che per Rickie la vita non è facile: è un’anima fragile, un vaso di coccio in mezzo a tanti vasi in ferro. Per di più è claudicante, lo si potrebbe definire zoppo, e qualcuno lo fa, qualcuno di quelli che hanno cominciato a bullizzarlo sin da quando era piccolo: preso in giro per la sua fragilità, il suo difetto fisico, anche se l’omosessualità non viene menzionata.
Come dal suo (presunto) amico Gerald, fidanzato con Agnes. E quando Gerald muore su un campo sportivo, Rickie non riesce a trovare di meglio che proporsi a Agnes come futuro marito. Chiaro gesto cavalleresco: ora che la donzella è rimasta sola e abbandonata, il cavaliere senza macchia e un po’ di paura, le offre il suo braccio.
Le speranze letteraria di Rickie vanno presto fallite. D’altra parte Rickie scrive libri che l’editore rifiuta perché fuori dai generi, senza etichetta commerciale:
Scrivi una bella storia di fantasmi, oppure qualcosa di assolutamente realistico, e saremo felici di pubblicarti, gli dice.
E invece Rickie finisce per seguire il cognato, il fratello di sua moglie, che è diventato direttore di una scuola: Agnes sarà la donna di casa, e Rickie uno degli insegnanti. Addio sogni di gloria.
Se non che un bel giorno appare all’orizzonte di Rickie un fratellastro, figlio illegittimo di suo padre. È più giovane di Rickie, più forte e atletico, meno istruito, meno educato, più rustico, ma forse anche più diretto. All’inizio i fratellastri non legano, anche perché Stephen, il giovane dei due, ha una propensione per la bottiglia.
Credo che sia la successiva scoperta che Stephen è in realtà figlio illegittimo di sua madre, e non suo padre, che spinge i due fratellastri a legare di più. Per Rickie è anche una forma di crescita personale, un modo per sfuggire al giogo di sua moglie, bigotta e provinciale, e del di lei fratello, nonché boss di Rickie. E in questo il racconto si dimostra bildungsroman.
Purtroppo il compimento esistenziale e anche artistico di Rickie avviene troppo tardi. Ma Stephen, il suo ritrovato fratello, riuscirà a fare pubblicare postumi ma con successo i racconti di Rickie.
La prosa di Forster scorre lenta come un fiume pacifico. Ma in crescendo: man mano che procede la rigenerazione di Rickie attraverso il ricongiungimento con Stephen, man mano che il protagonista si emancipa e conquista la sua dignità, il tono diventa più largo, in qualche modo più impetuoso. Un crescendo. Appassionato.
E credo sia appunto questo “il viaggio più lungo”: non tanto la vita in sé, quanto il proprio percorso di sviluppo personale e interiore, la ricerca della propria integrità.
E.M. Forster al lavoro.
Il romanzo è ambientato nel Wiltshire.
Nella esigua produzione di narrativa di E.M.Forster (sei titoli – invece, molti più dedicati alla saggistica), questo è il romanzo meno noto. Il suo secondo, il suo preferito, quello che gli era più caro. Uno di quelli più autobiografici: direi che su questo versante solo Maurice si spinge oltre.
Ed è l’unico rimasto senza adattamento cinematografico e televisivo.
Il protagonista studia in un’università di quelle, parole dello stesso Forster, che formano ragazzi con il corpo ben sviluppato, la mente discretamente sviluppata e il cuore completamente atrofizzato.
Facile intuire che per Rickie la vita non è facile: è un’anima fragile, un vaso di coccio in mezzo a tanti vasi in ferro. Per di più è claudicante, lo si potrebbe definire zoppo, e qualcuno lo fa, qualcuno di quelli che hanno cominciato a bullizzarlo sin da quando era piccolo: preso in giro per la sua fragilità, il suo difetto fisico, anche se l’omosessualità non viene menzionata.
Come dal suo (presunto) amico Gerald, fidanzato con Agnes. E quando Gerald muore su un campo sportivo, Rickie non riesce a trovare di meglio che proporsi a Agnes come futuro marito. Chiaro gesto cavalleresco: ora che la donzella è rimasta sola e abbandonata, il cavaliere senza macchia e un po’ di paura, le offre il suo braccio.
Le speranze letteraria di Rickie vanno presto fallite. D’altra parte Rickie scrive libri che l’editore rifiuta perché fuori dai generi, senza etichetta commerciale:
Scrivi una bella storia di fantasmi, oppure qualcosa di assolutamente realistico, e saremo felici di pubblicarti, gli dice.
E invece Rickie finisce per seguire il cognato, il fratello di sua moglie, che è diventato direttore di una scuola: Agnes sarà la donna di casa, e Rickie uno degli insegnanti. Addio sogni di gloria.
Se non che un bel giorno appare all’orizzonte di Rickie un fratellastro, figlio illegittimo di suo padre. È più giovane di Rickie, più forte e atletico, meno istruito, meno educato, più rustico, ma forse anche più diretto. All’inizio i fratellastri non legano, anche perché Stephen, il giovane dei due, ha una propensione per la bottiglia.
Credo che sia la successiva scoperta che Stephen è in realtà figlio illegittimo di sua madre, e non suo padre, che spinge i due fratellastri a legare di più. Per Rickie è anche una forma di crescita personale, un modo per sfuggire al giogo di sua moglie, bigotta e provinciale, e del di lei fratello, nonché boss di Rickie. E in questo il racconto si dimostra bildungsroman.
Purtroppo il compimento esistenziale e anche artistico di Rickie avviene troppo tardi. Ma Stephen, il suo ritrovato fratello, riuscirà a fare pubblicare postumi ma con successo i racconti di Rickie.
La prosa di Forster scorre lenta come un fiume pacifico. Ma in crescendo: man mano che procede la rigenerazione di Rickie attraverso il ricongiungimento con Stephen, man mano che il protagonista si emancipa e conquista la sua dignità, il tono diventa più largo, in qualche modo più impetuoso. Un crescendo. Appassionato.
E credo sia appunto questo “il viaggio più lungo”: non tanto la vita in sé, quanto il proprio percorso di sviluppo personale e interiore, la ricerca della propria integrità.
E.M. Forster al lavoro.
September 29, 2025
The Longest Journey is an unusual novel by E.M. Forster. It is neither plot-driven, since the story is a product of some disjointed episodes, nor character-driven, since there's no character development. At most, it is a bildungsroman, but a poor effort at that. I was initially perplexed and couldn't fathom why Forster created such a story with its insufferable characters. Even the ones I liked were barely pleasant. We know Forster for his love of metaphor and symbols. So, I looked beyond what was said and read what wasn't written. Ego Illuminatus!:) The whole story was symbolic. Forster had a unique vision for English life and was hugely critical of class inequity and the hypocrisy of Victorian conventions. He wanted to show how intellectual and social progress was stifled by these rigid conventions. And this disjointed story of Rickie, Ansell, Pembrokes, Failings, and Stephen is Forster's attempt at symbolizing his views.
Rickie Elliot, the protagonist of our story, makes an undesirable match when he marries Agnes Pembroke. The young Cambridge graduate, full of unconventional views and ideals, is mocked, tyrannized, and bullied by Agnes and his brother, Herbert, until he submits to the accepted conventions. Rickie feels stifled but is too weak to fight. Through this submission, however, he loses himself, his identity, and his creativity. The tragedy that follows is the culmination of this surrender. The snobbish Pembrokes are the upholders of Victorian conventions and morals. Adultery, illegitimacy - the results of human weakness and passions, are taboo for them. They judge and condemn while themselves being full of vices, and in so doing, keep two brothers apart, denying them acknowledgment and accepting one another.
Stewart Ansell is the hand of progress. He is fearless in his unconventional views, even if they work detrimentally to him, and upholds them strongly without yielding to any form of social pressure. He fights on behalf of Rickie to free him from the grip of the Pembrokes and eventually succeeds. Ansell's triumph is Forster's way of showing that England will progress towards a more sympathetic and less hypocritical age. And when this age finally dawns, it is people like Stephen, a product of two classes, who would tear off the barriers and create true human brotherhood. A similar theme was taken up by Forster in his Howard's End written a few years later.
The title, The Longest Journey, derives from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem Epipsychidion which I quote:
Forster was critical of the cold isolation of society, of people making divisions among them based on class, religion, and morals. He saw this living in a bubble with few close friends and family as injurious to human progress, and only disaster and tragedy could come about, as was seen from Rickie's life.
Symbology is what makes this novel fascinating. Otherwise, the episodic story with unpleasant and insufferable characters will exasperate you. The beauty of Forster's writing is nothing new for those who've read him. It always adds colour and decoration to his stories. And here too, there is no exception. I indulged myself in the beauty of his words and let myself be carried by his symbolism. And so, The Longest Journey was not a dreary read to me, but an engaging and interesting one.
More of my reviews can be found at http://piyangiejay.com/
Rickie Elliot, the protagonist of our story, makes an undesirable match when he marries Agnes Pembroke. The young Cambridge graduate, full of unconventional views and ideals, is mocked, tyrannized, and bullied by Agnes and his brother, Herbert, until he submits to the accepted conventions. Rickie feels stifled but is too weak to fight. Through this submission, however, he loses himself, his identity, and his creativity. The tragedy that follows is the culmination of this surrender. The snobbish Pembrokes are the upholders of Victorian conventions and morals. Adultery, illegitimacy - the results of human weakness and passions, are taboo for them. They judge and condemn while themselves being full of vices, and in so doing, keep two brothers apart, denying them acknowledgment and accepting one another.
Stewart Ansell is the hand of progress. He is fearless in his unconventional views, even if they work detrimentally to him, and upholds them strongly without yielding to any form of social pressure. He fights on behalf of Rickie to free him from the grip of the Pembrokes and eventually succeeds. Ansell's triumph is Forster's way of showing that England will progress towards a more sympathetic and less hypocritical age. And when this age finally dawns, it is people like Stephen, a product of two classes, who would tear off the barriers and create true human brotherhood. A similar theme was taken up by Forster in his Howard's End written a few years later.
The title, The Longest Journey, derives from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem Epipsychidion which I quote:
I never was attached to that great sect
Whose doctrine is that each one should select
Out of the world a mistress or a friend,
And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend
To cold oblivion? though 'tis in the code
Of modern morals, and the beaten road
Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread
Who travel to their home among the dead
By the broad highway of the world? and so
With one sad friend, and many a jealous foe,
The dreariest and the longest journey go.
Forster was critical of the cold isolation of society, of people making divisions among them based on class, religion, and morals. He saw this living in a bubble with few close friends and family as injurious to human progress, and only disaster and tragedy could come about, as was seen from Rickie's life.
Symbology is what makes this novel fascinating. Otherwise, the episodic story with unpleasant and insufferable characters will exasperate you. The beauty of Forster's writing is nothing new for those who've read him. It always adds colour and decoration to his stories. And here too, there is no exception. I indulged myself in the beauty of his words and let myself be carried by his symbolism. And so, The Longest Journey was not a dreary read to me, but an engaging and interesting one.
More of my reviews can be found at http://piyangiejay.com/
January 15, 2021
Maybe 3.5. I enjoyed this, and Forster's writing was wonderful as always, but I didn't love it as much as the other Forster books I've read. It has some fascinating sections and some very interesting characters, but the plot didn't hang together as much for me as Forster's other books.
April 21, 2018
Forster's least-read novel for a reason, The Longest Journey is a seemingly plotless tale which follows an unlikable band of Cantabrigians. However, Forster doesn't seem to understand the ridiculousness of his own characters and thus expects us to care about these fools. Instead read Waugh's Decline and Fall in which similar characters are given the sending-up that they deserve.
May 19, 2023
I like what this book says. This is why I am giving it four stars. Life is hard. Do not expect and easy journey. The journey referred to in the book’s title is the journey of life.
The Longest Journey is a bildungsroman set in England at the beginning of the 1900s. The central character is Rickie Elliot. He is an orphan, and he limps. We meet him first at Cambridge. What should he do with his life? He enjoys writing stories—maybe he should become an author! We follow his journey through life--the stumbling blocks put in his way, the inevitable sidetracks taken and where he finally ends up. The novel has autobiographical content.
The book has numerous themes—being an orphan, bullying, physical disabilities, schooling, finding and then sticking with an occupation that satisfies one’s personal goals. Marriage of mismatched partners is another theme. The themes overlap. Moral and philosophical questions tie the whole together.
What I appreciated at the start was the prose, intriguing turns of phrase, subtle humor and the author’s ability to draw a place (Cambridge) and introduce characters whom I immediately wanted to know more about. The setting was atmospheric, and the characters piqued my interest right off the bat, even before the plot began to take shape!
The plot has twists and turns I never expected. I had to know how the story would end. I will state only that the ending is realistic, not a happy, hunky dory conclusion by any means, but nor is it without glimmers of hope.
No character is superfluous. Each has an identity that rings true. What each one says and does fits their personality. Some you’ll like, others you won’t.
The prose is not always easy to follow. The author’s usage of pronouns is frequently confusing. Who is “he”? Who is “she”? This I asked myself many times, and then of course I had to backtrack. There are words used which I didn’t recognize. The words are not dated but used only in specific areas of England.
Wanda McCaddon narrates the audiobook. I liked the narration at the start--when Rickie and his classmates were throwing around ideas at the university. Later, as the plot becomes more complicated and more characters are added, the person speaking becomes difficult to discern. As mentioned, the pronouns are confusing, and you do not hear from the intonation who says what. McCaddon speaks faster and faster as the story progresses. No, I do not like the narration—two stars is the highest I can go.
Life is not fair. There is satisfaction in doing what is right, !
**********************
*Where Angels Fear to Tread 4 stars
*A Passage to India 4 stars
*Howards End 4 stars
*The Longest Journey 4 stars
*A Room with a View 3 stars
*Maurice 3 stars
The Longest Journey is a bildungsroman set in England at the beginning of the 1900s. The central character is Rickie Elliot. He is an orphan, and he limps. We meet him first at Cambridge. What should he do with his life? He enjoys writing stories—maybe he should become an author! We follow his journey through life--the stumbling blocks put in his way, the inevitable sidetracks taken and where he finally ends up. The novel has autobiographical content.
The book has numerous themes—being an orphan, bullying, physical disabilities, schooling, finding and then sticking with an occupation that satisfies one’s personal goals. Marriage of mismatched partners is another theme. The themes overlap. Moral and philosophical questions tie the whole together.
What I appreciated at the start was the prose, intriguing turns of phrase, subtle humor and the author’s ability to draw a place (Cambridge) and introduce characters whom I immediately wanted to know more about. The setting was atmospheric, and the characters piqued my interest right off the bat, even before the plot began to take shape!
The plot has twists and turns I never expected. I had to know how the story would end. I will state only that the ending is realistic, not a happy, hunky dory conclusion by any means, but nor is it without glimmers of hope.
No character is superfluous. Each has an identity that rings true. What each one says and does fits their personality. Some you’ll like, others you won’t.
The prose is not always easy to follow. The author’s usage of pronouns is frequently confusing. Who is “he”? Who is “she”? This I asked myself many times, and then of course I had to backtrack. There are words used which I didn’t recognize. The words are not dated but used only in specific areas of England.
Wanda McCaddon narrates the audiobook. I liked the narration at the start--when Rickie and his classmates were throwing around ideas at the university. Later, as the plot becomes more complicated and more characters are added, the person speaking becomes difficult to discern. As mentioned, the pronouns are confusing, and you do not hear from the intonation who says what. McCaddon speaks faster and faster as the story progresses. No, I do not like the narration—two stars is the highest I can go.
Life is not fair. There is satisfaction in doing what is right, !
**********************
*Where Angels Fear to Tread 4 stars
*A Passage to India 4 stars
*Howards End 4 stars
*The Longest Journey 4 stars
*A Room with a View 3 stars
*Maurice 3 stars
May 25, 2025
"There are men and women - we know it from history - who have been born into the world for each other, and for no one else, who have accomplished the longest journey locked in each other's arms."
Novels like sex can follow trends. The quickie and strenuous are just two. The Longest Journey is neither of these. It is slow and the author seems almost not to be trying. Its two main characters are no delight. As romances go, this should be a dud. But wait. A climax worth waiting for is ahead.
Surprise is Forster's strength. He knows how and when to strike. If he stretches out passages until he does, it is meant. The calm is like a blindfold. The trivial details are but restraints. Struggle if you wish. I did, too. Get on with it! I thought. Then, a man, young and close to the earth as Mrs Chatterley's lover appears. The room spins from that point. Stars light the sky. Stephen, oh Stephen.
Novels like sex can follow trends. The quickie and strenuous are just two. The Longest Journey is neither of these. It is slow and the author seems almost not to be trying. Its two main characters are no delight. As romances go, this should be a dud. But wait. A climax worth waiting for is ahead.
Surprise is Forster's strength. He knows how and when to strike. If he stretches out passages until he does, it is meant. The calm is like a blindfold. The trivial details are but restraints. Struggle if you wish. I did, too. Get on with it! I thought. Then, a man, young and close to the earth as Mrs Chatterley's lover appears. The room spins from that point. Stars light the sky. Stephen, oh Stephen.
December 4, 2025
It is easier to say what this novel isn't than the other way around. It isn't a comedy of manners—drama and tragedy is all around, although it has its share of humor. It isn't a romance—love and marriage, turns out, do not go together like a horse and carriage, and a domineering woman may in fact have a corrupting effect on a weak man. It isn't a campus novel, despite its school settings (one being Cambridge), or a critique of the English in Italy or India. Anyone looking for another Italian romp will be disappointed.
What it is is a story rife with family secrets and class distinctions and an exploration of what it means to live authentically. To get married—or not—for the right reasons—or not. To believe in God, to live according to convention, to value money, or intellect, or creativity, or the majesty of nature, or to think nothing of any of it. Is there a middle ground? Which course brings true satisfaction? Prone-to-fainting Rickie Elliot is a total prig—enter coarse yet lovable Stephen Wonham (who would fit right in on The Archers) to show him the light.
For not being a romance novel, I do like what it had to say about romantic love:
And just about life in general:
Having read it on the heels of Richard Yates's Young Hearts Crying, I was surprised at the number of parallels I was able to draw given all that separates them. I enjoyed it even more on second reading. Sawston also features in Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread, and that novel's Miss Herriton (presumably) gets a reference in this one.
What it is is a story rife with family secrets and class distinctions and an exploration of what it means to live authentically. To get married—or not—for the right reasons—or not. To believe in God, to live according to convention, to value money, or intellect, or creativity, or the majesty of nature, or to think nothing of any of it. Is there a middle ground? Which course brings true satisfaction? Prone-to-fainting Rickie Elliot is a total prig—enter coarse yet lovable Stephen Wonham (who would fit right in on The Archers) to show him the light.
For not being a romance novel, I do like what it had to say about romantic love:
There are men and women—we know it from history—who have been born into the world for each other, and for no one else, who have accomplished the longest journey locked in each other's arms. But romantic love is also the code of modern morals, and, for this reason, popular. Eternal union, eternal ownership—these are tempting baits for the average man. He swallows them, will not confess his mistake, and —perhaps to cover it- cries "dirty cynic" at such a man as Stephen.
And just about life in general:
He knew once for all that we are all of us bubbles on an extremely rough sea. Into this sea humanity has built, as it were, some little breakwaters—scientific knowledge, civilized restraint—so that the bubbles do not break so frequently or so soon. But the sea has not altered...
Having read it on the heels of Richard Yates's Young Hearts Crying, I was surprised at the number of parallels I was able to draw given all that separates them. I enjoyed it even more on second reading. Sawston also features in Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread, and that novel's Miss Herriton (presumably) gets a reference in this one.
January 27, 2025
A neglected Forster, very effective, but also disconcerting. Forster (1879-1970), a teen during the Oscar Wilde scandal, is one of thousands of Brit males who never recovered from obscene UK laws, in "civilized Brit," that went on for 60+ years.... In this ambitious and, for EM, "personal" novel, the delicate, aspiring writer Rickie, falls automatically into marriage w a comely, but shallow woman who selfishly manipulates his life into one of convention and middle-class hypocrisy. Passively, he finds himself smothered....into a fake life that he doesnt want.
The fakeness is jarred upon learning that he has a half-brother, a butch nature boy, "a social thunderbolt," writes EM. This novel, like others, deals with illegitimacy and inheritance. Secret births/parentage and stolen inheritances were the norm in those dark 1900 days. ~ There are many deaths: EM tosses them off while detailing, by contrast, an angry dinner where everything is hurled to the floor. (EM's dramatic choices may distress some readers). This is not a plot for a Merchant-Ivory movie. The novel inhabits the hurt (including Rickie's "lameness," some years later examined by MOM's Philip Carey, as a gay symbol) that EM held silent until his death.
Gentle, kind, a humanist, EM grew up amongst upper middle-class women: there was a nice inheritance from a great-aunt; he lived, off-on, w his mother until her death in 1945. (Ekk...) He liked working-class men, and, happily, found some who brought him to life. Published in 1907, this novel of repression reveals his fantasies. Critic Lionel Trilling, a Forster enthusiast, called it a "passionate" novel; it isn't. It's an intense novel. (Trilling and wife Diana would have collapsed if they knew EM was gay). The way of the world from 1900 to 1940 to 2020.
The fakeness is jarred upon learning that he has a half-brother, a butch nature boy, "a social thunderbolt," writes EM. This novel, like others, deals with illegitimacy and inheritance. Secret births/parentage and stolen inheritances were the norm in those dark 1900 days. ~ There are many deaths: EM tosses them off while detailing, by contrast, an angry dinner where everything is hurled to the floor. (EM's dramatic choices may distress some readers). This is not a plot for a Merchant-Ivory movie. The novel inhabits the hurt (including Rickie's "lameness," some years later examined by MOM's Philip Carey, as a gay symbol) that EM held silent until his death.
Gentle, kind, a humanist, EM grew up amongst upper middle-class women: there was a nice inheritance from a great-aunt; he lived, off-on, w his mother until her death in 1945. (Ekk...) He liked working-class men, and, happily, found some who brought him to life. Published in 1907, this novel of repression reveals his fantasies. Critic Lionel Trilling, a Forster enthusiast, called it a "passionate" novel; it isn't. It's an intense novel. (Trilling and wife Diana would have collapsed if they knew EM was gay). The way of the world from 1900 to 1940 to 2020.
June 6, 2017
This is not an easy novel for me to review because I love E.M. Forster, but I didn’t love this book. The overall storyline I liked well enough: a young Cambridge man discusses philosophy with his fellow students, finishes life at university, which he has enjoyed immensely, and tries to establish himself as a writer, only to be lured away by a woman, by marriage, by the woman’s brother and his insistence on the main character making his way in the world by teaching instead of writing, thus marking a deroute which only truth and a half-brother he didn’t know he had might help him out of. In the process, of course, he loses touch with his real friends and his real self.
The problem for me lay mainly in the tone and in the author’s intrusion. There were way too many metaphysical musings, references to Pan or Aphrodite or some other symbol that pertained to the story, which stopped me in my narrative drive and irritated me. Had the characters themselves had a fraction of these thoughts, it might have improved things for me. The time it took me to read it tells me that I wasn’t exactly dying to find out what would happen next, and this was also because I didn’t really care about the characters much. In addition, they had the weirdest dialogs I’ve read in a long time. If I didn’t know it was Forster being serious, I might have thought it was Waugh satirizing the English middle classes.
The themes of conventions and normality vs. nature and spirituality were too heavily drawn out, the ideal of the brute savage (the half brother) and the shallow wife a bit too nauseating or simplistic as emblems of good and bad, although I appreciate the ideas behind them. The story, or lack thereof, bored me sometimes, but on the other hand I saw the makings of Forster’s masterpieces, Howards End and A Passage to India and also ideas explored in A Room with a View – all novels that I love. If you’ve never read Forster, this is certainly not the place to start. (Why then three stars, you may ask? Because it’s Forster, and he and I go way back. I couldn't possibly go lower than three).
The problem for me lay mainly in the tone and in the author’s intrusion. There were way too many metaphysical musings, references to Pan or Aphrodite or some other symbol that pertained to the story, which stopped me in my narrative drive and irritated me. Had the characters themselves had a fraction of these thoughts, it might have improved things for me. The time it took me to read it tells me that I wasn’t exactly dying to find out what would happen next, and this was also because I didn’t really care about the characters much. In addition, they had the weirdest dialogs I’ve read in a long time. If I didn’t know it was Forster being serious, I might have thought it was Waugh satirizing the English middle classes.
The themes of conventions and normality vs. nature and spirituality were too heavily drawn out, the ideal of the brute savage (the half brother) and the shallow wife a bit too nauseating or simplistic as emblems of good and bad, although I appreciate the ideas behind them. The story, or lack thereof, bored me sometimes, but on the other hand I saw the makings of Forster’s masterpieces, Howards End and A Passage to India and also ideas explored in A Room with a View – all novels that I love. If you’ve never read Forster, this is certainly not the place to start. (Why then three stars, you may ask? Because it’s Forster, and he and I go way back. I couldn't possibly go lower than three).
June 26, 2008
Oh how I suck up these wordy early 20th Century tales of love and woe and irony.
I truly enjoyed this book, I really yearned to read it and I could not really express why to someone who would say "What?!?!? Nothing happens! It is just a bunch of stuffy people worrying about manners!".
Oh, but it is that and so much more.
If you're like me and you could really go for some Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, or some other canonized British/European/American Ex-Patriot from those times, then you will like this book.
I truly enjoyed this book, I really yearned to read it and I could not really express why to someone who would say "What?!?!? Nothing happens! It is just a bunch of stuffy people worrying about manners!".
Oh, but it is that and so much more.
If you're like me and you could really go for some Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, or some other canonized British/European/American Ex-Patriot from those times, then you will like this book.
January 8, 2023
5th book of 2023.
2.5. I thought about giving this book 3-stars but as I slid it back on my bookcase I thought to myself, This was just okay. It is long, 400 pages, plotless, mostly without emotion, as I called it in one update, bloodless, with only a few strikes of poignancy. Forster does away with most descriptions and instead focuses on dialogue, which meant, at least, it read fast in a lot of places. The whole family dynamic that's going on isn't very compelling and I found it quite predictable, only in the last quarter was I actually surprised by the story's direction. It reminded me of Jude the Obscure, partly John Williams's Stoner, too, but I love both those books, so this doesn't come close to them in power. I've already read A Room With a View, I did at university years back and remember enjoying it quite a lot, so perhaps that's where Forster's work takes a turn. I've almost exclusively heard good things about Howard's End, and that's next for me, so I'm pleased about that. Again, I think Forster is good, I don't hate him, but these early books are fairly weak. Funny, the other day I was thinking about how in music, people are often nostalgic for the first album or their early work. Quite often with musicians they bring out late career stuff and people complain it isn't like their old stuff. And yet with novelists, it seems the opposite. We forgive debuts and early works of great writers as being, well, early works, and instead focus on their later masterpieces. Only few writers have better early novels, Hemingway, for example. Forster is of the other camp, I think: steadily better with every book.
2.5. I thought about giving this book 3-stars but as I slid it back on my bookcase I thought to myself, This was just okay. It is long, 400 pages, plotless, mostly without emotion, as I called it in one update, bloodless, with only a few strikes of poignancy. Forster does away with most descriptions and instead focuses on dialogue, which meant, at least, it read fast in a lot of places. The whole family dynamic that's going on isn't very compelling and I found it quite predictable, only in the last quarter was I actually surprised by the story's direction. It reminded me of Jude the Obscure, partly John Williams's Stoner, too, but I love both those books, so this doesn't come close to them in power. I've already read A Room With a View, I did at university years back and remember enjoying it quite a lot, so perhaps that's where Forster's work takes a turn. I've almost exclusively heard good things about Howard's End, and that's next for me, so I'm pleased about that. Again, I think Forster is good, I don't hate him, but these early books are fairly weak. Funny, the other day I was thinking about how in music, people are often nostalgic for the first album or their early work. Quite often with musicians they bring out late career stuff and people complain it isn't like their old stuff. And yet with novelists, it seems the opposite. We forgive debuts and early works of great writers as being, well, early works, and instead focus on their later masterpieces. Only few writers have better early novels, Hemingway, for example. Forster is of the other camp, I think: steadily better with every book.
February 27, 2013
It is described by Stephen Spender, I think, as Forster's "most accomplished work". It is flawed, the girl in the novel exceptionally tedious, the ideal "brute savage" too ideal. But there are memorable scenes-the awful opening speech for the new term, the depiction of bullying, the atmosphere of convention and restraint which closes in on Ricky. There is much to be said for the refining qualities of censorship when considering this novel. Whatever one thinks of it, it is a far finer novel than "Maurice". "Maurice" is a work in which Forster is frank about his sexuality. "Longest Journey" is an extended metaphor of the repression of the homosexual and "Longest Journey" the book written in disguise is far better than the revelatory "Maurice". However "The Longest Journey" is gloomy and somewhat implausible. I do not think many people would regard it as a great pleasure to read (in contrast to say, "Passage to India" or "Howard's End".
March 20, 2009
This book depressed me slightly... the ending seemed to convey that life is alot of dead ends and perhaps a bit aimless. I agree that life is often this way, but I'm not sure I like it in literature. I absolutely loved Ansell's character, though, and wish he were in the book more. I think Ansell and Rickie's friendship was more interesting than anything with Agnes. The idea of reality I absolutely loved reading about. I believe someone said that Forster is the professor with the door always open, and that's so true in many ways. The philosophic questions in the book -- whether people can lose that spirit of life(Agnes did when Gerald died), or forget "what people are like" (like Aunt Emily), the question of whether the "cow is there" -- all these themes are easily dismissed as abstract and incomprehensible, but Forster explains and illustrates. Although I did not like this book as much as A Room With a View, I can understand why it was Forster's personal favorite -- it feels the most autobiographical of his novels. Rickie's insecurities, idealisms, and utlimate realizations seem to be first hand. Really, though, I love Ansell! I wish it had ended with him instead of Stephen.
February 4, 2011
TLJ was Forster's favourite novel, and now I've read it I can see why. If you've read the The Machine Stops collection of short stories and a biography of Forster, you can have endless fun in the Cambridge section playing 'spot the biographical detail'. Rickie comes so very, very close to being a self-insert. In fact, he probably started life as one, but as soon as he leaves Cambridge, his life takes a completely different turn and he ends up possibly representing the road not taken of the conventional life. Ansell seems to me to bear a marked resemblance to HOM, the student Forster... I want to say 'fancied' or 'had a crush on', but neither of those seems quite right. Anyway, that's pretty much what it amounted to, though about halfway through Rickie and Ansell switch with their RL counterparts so that it's Rickie who plumps for middle-class respectability and marriage. I have my suspicions that bits of Durham's character in Maurice were also borrowed from HOM, who was apparently very keen on the platonic ideal of homosexuality, but rather less on the sexuality part.
Anyway, enough 'I love you, EM Forster!' witterings from me. Once again, Forster demonstrates his habit of killing characters off in a line or two - it happens to at least three people here - and it's not as adroitly done as in later books. While in other books it's shocking, you can always think back and go, 'OK, I could have seen that coming'. Not so here. Character pootles along quite happily, then, bam, football injury, laid out in the pavilion, bam, dead. And the reader's left going, '... O-kay. Huh.' That's my main complaint with the book. Apart from that, the dialogue is pretty damn convincing, as ever (I want his dialogue skills so much), and some of Rickie's thoughts really chimed with me. Forster has this knack of taking things I've been half thinking and writing them out so they actually make sense. (Sorry, did I say, 'Enough wittering'? I lied.) Also, given Rickie is pretty much a perfect conduit for Forster's thoughts and ideas, this is the only novel to directly express the idea of the 'genius loci' that permeates his other work. I really, really should've read this before Oxford, dammit.
Anyway, enough 'I love you, EM Forster!' witterings from me. Once again, Forster demonstrates his habit of killing characters off in a line or two - it happens to at least three people here - and it's not as adroitly done as in later books. While in other books it's shocking, you can always think back and go, 'OK, I could have seen that coming'. Not so here. Character pootles along quite happily, then, bam, football injury, laid out in the pavilion, bam, dead. And the reader's left going, '... O-kay. Huh.' That's my main complaint with the book. Apart from that, the dialogue is pretty damn convincing, as ever (I want his dialogue skills so much), and some of Rickie's thoughts really chimed with me. Forster has this knack of taking things I've been half thinking and writing them out so they actually make sense. (Sorry, did I say, 'Enough wittering'? I lied.) Also, given Rickie is pretty much a perfect conduit for Forster's thoughts and ideas, this is the only novel to directly express the idea of the 'genius loci' that permeates his other work. I really, really should've read this before Oxford, dammit.
June 21, 2012
As a limited but interesting point of comparison, this is a little like a novel version of The Education of Henry Adams. Unlike Adams, the protagonist here is educated on the cusp of the 20th century rather than on the pinnacle of 19th century thinking. However, the lapse of time in between has changed little. The protagonist here struggles to apply his Cambridge education to a changing world and to apply himself to meaningful work. The choices he faces as a teacher and something of an idealist in adapting to what the modern world presents were interesting to me – especially since like me the protagonist has a disability.
Forster is unrelenting in pointing out how ready people are to settle into uncomfortable and inconsistent routine rather than really examining assumptions. The thoughtful reader, perhaps, will be frightened how ready the writer is to lock his characters into the path cut by a single choice over several years. He is actually willing to skip time that he doesn't think matters, that in his view is simply a result of a choice two years ago. While sober in this technique, he is also adept at stepping back and pointing out with some gentleness the frailties of his human characters.
Forster is unrelenting in pointing out how ready people are to settle into uncomfortable and inconsistent routine rather than really examining assumptions. The thoughtful reader, perhaps, will be frightened how ready the writer is to lock his characters into the path cut by a single choice over several years. He is actually willing to skip time that he doesn't think matters, that in his view is simply a result of a choice two years ago. While sober in this technique, he is also adept at stepping back and pointing out with some gentleness the frailties of his human characters.
November 26, 2020
Disappointing bildungsroman of a disabled man whose life ressembles 'Pip' from 'Great Expectations' with characters akin to Miss Haversham and Estella, in a setting reminiscent of 'Brideshead Revisited'. And, the title speaks of tedium, which this reader certainly experienced during most of the first 2/3 of the book, which was only slightly reduced by the latter third. However, the ensuing death was too contrived to be credible & reduced the rating from a 3* to 2.25*.
Only recommended if you wish to complete the author's oeuvre!
Only recommended if you wish to complete the author's oeuvre!
September 22, 2022
Mijn laatste Forster, echt wel the end of an era. Ik had The Longest Journey als laatste werk bewaard aangezien het Forster’s persoonlijke favoriet was en hoopte dat het zo ook weer een nieuwe favoriet van mezelf zou worden. Hoewel het geen meesterwerk als Howards End is (ook vrij moeilijk te evenaren) en me (nog) niet zo nauw aan het hart ligt als Maurice of A Room with a View, bewijst The Longest Journey weer Forster’s talent voor het aankaarten van maatschappelijke hypocrisie en de struggle van jezelf aan te passen aan maatschappelijke waarden die niet overeenkomen met je persoonlijke en de tragedie die dit ontketent. Een heel mooi (en beetje tragisch) werk waarin ik toch wel wat van mezelf herkende in de protagonist, en na het lezen van Forster’s biografie ook veel autobiografische elementen herkende. Ben heel benieuwd hoe mijn kijk over dit boek over de jaren verandert met elke keer dat ik het ga herlezen. Hoe dan ook, laat ik deze era en te lange review eindigen met: live laugh love E.M.Forster (the only author in my opinion) <333
August 17, 2022
4 stars - English Ebook
Quote: Rickie, on whose carpet the matches were being dropped, did not like to join in the discussion. It was too difficult for him. He could not even quibble. If he spoke, he should simply make himself a fool. He preferred to listen, and to watch the tobacco-smoke stealing out past the window-seat into the tranquil October air. He could see the court too, and the college cat teasing the college tortoise, and the kitchen-men with supper-trays upon their heads. Hot food for one—that must be for the geographical don, who never came in for Hall; cold food for three, apparently at half-a-crown a head, for some one he did not know; hot food, a la carte—obviously for the ladies haunting the next staircase; cold food for two, at two shillings—going to Ansell’s rooms for himself and Ansell, and as it passed under the lamp he saw that it was meringues again. Then the bedmakers began to arrive, chatting to each other pleasantly, and he could hear Ansell’s bedmaker say, “Oh dang!” when she found she had to lay Ansell’s tablecloth; for there was not a breath stirring. The great elms were motionless, and seemed still in the glory of midsummer, for the darkness hid the yellow blotches on their leaves, and their outlines were still rounded against the tender sky. Those elms were Dryads—so Rickie believed or pretended, and the line between the two is subtler than we admit. At all events they were lady trees, and had for generations fooled the college statutes by their residence in the haunts of youth.
But what about the cow? He returned to her with a start, for this would never do. He also would try to think the matter out. Was she there or not? The cow. There or not. He strained his eyes into the night.
Either way it was attractive. If she was there, other cows were there too. The darkness of Europe was dotted with them, and in the far East their flanks were shining in the rising sun. Great herds of them stood browsing in pastures where no man came nor need ever come, or plashed knee-deep by the brink of impassable rivers. And this, moreover, was the view of Ansell. Yet Tilliard’s view had a good deal in it. One might do worse than follow Tilliard, and suppose the cow not to be there unless oneself was there to see her. A cowless world, then, stretched round him on every side. Yet he had only to peep into a field, and, click! it would at once become radiant with bovine life.
Suddenly he realized that this, again, would never do. As usual, he had missed the whole point, and was overlaying philosophy with gross and senseless details. For if the cow was not there, the world and the fields were not there either. And what would Ansell care about sunlit flanks or impassable streams? Rickie rebuked his own groveling soul, and turned his eyes away from the night, which had led him to such absurd conclusions.-
Not Forster's best, for me, but still well written and complex.
Try Passage to India, Howard's End, Room with a View, or Maurice, you will be pleasntly surprised!
Quote: Rickie, on whose carpet the matches were being dropped, did not like to join in the discussion. It was too difficult for him. He could not even quibble. If he spoke, he should simply make himself a fool. He preferred to listen, and to watch the tobacco-smoke stealing out past the window-seat into the tranquil October air. He could see the court too, and the college cat teasing the college tortoise, and the kitchen-men with supper-trays upon their heads. Hot food for one—that must be for the geographical don, who never came in for Hall; cold food for three, apparently at half-a-crown a head, for some one he did not know; hot food, a la carte—obviously for the ladies haunting the next staircase; cold food for two, at two shillings—going to Ansell’s rooms for himself and Ansell, and as it passed under the lamp he saw that it was meringues again. Then the bedmakers began to arrive, chatting to each other pleasantly, and he could hear Ansell’s bedmaker say, “Oh dang!” when she found she had to lay Ansell’s tablecloth; for there was not a breath stirring. The great elms were motionless, and seemed still in the glory of midsummer, for the darkness hid the yellow blotches on their leaves, and their outlines were still rounded against the tender sky. Those elms were Dryads—so Rickie believed or pretended, and the line between the two is subtler than we admit. At all events they were lady trees, and had for generations fooled the college statutes by their residence in the haunts of youth.
But what about the cow? He returned to her with a start, for this would never do. He also would try to think the matter out. Was she there or not? The cow. There or not. He strained his eyes into the night.
Either way it was attractive. If she was there, other cows were there too. The darkness of Europe was dotted with them, and in the far East their flanks were shining in the rising sun. Great herds of them stood browsing in pastures where no man came nor need ever come, or plashed knee-deep by the brink of impassable rivers. And this, moreover, was the view of Ansell. Yet Tilliard’s view had a good deal in it. One might do worse than follow Tilliard, and suppose the cow not to be there unless oneself was there to see her. A cowless world, then, stretched round him on every side. Yet he had only to peep into a field, and, click! it would at once become radiant with bovine life.
Suddenly he realized that this, again, would never do. As usual, he had missed the whole point, and was overlaying philosophy with gross and senseless details. For if the cow was not there, the world and the fields were not there either. And what would Ansell care about sunlit flanks or impassable streams? Rickie rebuked his own groveling soul, and turned his eyes away from the night, which had led him to such absurd conclusions.-
Not Forster's best, for me, but still well written and complex.
Try Passage to India, Howard's End, Room with a View, or Maurice, you will be pleasntly surprised!
July 7, 2019
Μια απ’ τις ιδέες του συγγραφέα είναι πως ο άνθρωπος που ερωτεύεται, παύει να είναι χλιαρός και πεζός. Αισθάνομαι πως ο ήρωας του θεοποιεί τον έρωτα, χωρίς να διακρίνει διαβαθμίσεις, έναν έρωτα ξένο που βλέπει σαν ένα στιγμιότυπο και του μοιάζει, όπως θα σκεφτόμασταν να αναπαριστάται το σύστημα αυτών των ανθρώπων, σαν εσωτερικό γινόμενο, που τους εξυψώνει. Μα που έξω απ’ αυτό χάνουν πια ακόμα και την ικανότητα να είναι χλιαροί, ή πεζοί. Μόνοι και κενοί. Όμως μαζί, εξυψώνεται η ιδέα του Ανθρώπου. Κι αργότερα ακολουθεί ένας ακόμα συλλογισμός, για τους νικητές – δυνατούς, που μέσα στον έρωτα πολλαπλασιάζονται μεταξύ τους ( ναι με τους κανόνες που θα φανταζόμασταν να ισχύουν σε ένα σύστημα ανθρώπων, για το εσωτερικό γινόμενο, ώστε τίποτα να μη μένει αχρησιμοποίητο, ούτε καν οι γωνίες κι οι αποκλίσεις, που με γυμνό μάτι δε βλέπουμε ) και μόλις απομακρύνονται, χάνονται διαμιάς κι οι ελάχιστες αναστολές που είχαν πριν τον έρωτα, γίνονται βάναυσοι με τους απέξω.
Ο θάνατος για τον ήρωα του Φόρστερ, δεν είναι μια κατάσταση που μας επιτρέπει να την αντιμετωπίζουμε στωικά, ή παθητικά, είναι:
Ναι, αγαπημένη μου Άγκνες, βεβαίως, αλλά πρέπει να βεβαιωθώ ότι το σκέφτεσαι. Αυτό είναι το χειρότερο πράγμα που μπορεί να σου συμβεί στη ζωή, γι’ αυτό πρέπει να το αντιμετωπίσεις – πρέπει να το σκέφτεσαι. Όλοι, θα σου λένε κάνε κουράγιο, έχε εμπιστοσύνη στο χρόνο. Όχι, όχι. Κάνουν λάθος. Αντιμετώπισε το
Κι ίσως, η μοναχική θλίψη είναι η μοναδική ευκαιρία ν’ ακούσουμε τον εαυτό μας τελικά.
Η επόμενη ιδέα του συγγραφέα, που αποτελεί έναν απ’ τους πυρήνες του βιβλίου είναι πως με κάθε κόστος, εκείνο που μας ταράζει, το αληθινό, το πιθανόν να μας αναγκάσει, να διαφέρουμε, πρέπει να το εξορίσουμε, να το κρύψουμε και τότε Η χαρά της ήταν τώρα ανυπόκριτη και έτρεξε πάνω για να τη μεταδώσει στο Ρίκι .
Απ’ την αρχή, μου έκαναν εντύπωση οι χαμηλές βαθμολογίες του βιβλίου και οι κακές κριτικές ( και εννοώ πως προσωπικά αγνοώ τις κριτικές που θέλουν να μεταδώσουν το δικό τους, αγνοώντας τη φωνή τους με τον τρόπο που την έχει ενισχύσει το βιβλίο που διάβασαν. Κρύβουν αυτό που είναι σημαντικό, για χάρη του εντυπωσιακού. Αυτές οι κριτικές δε μ’ ενδιαφέρουν. Είναι άχρηστες. Μου δείχνουν πως το βιβλίο δεν είχε τη δύναμη που του αποδόθηκε, γιατί κράτησε ένα χαμηλό πνεύμα – και όλοι είμαστε χαμηλά πνεύματα – χαμηλά ). Μου θύμιζε κατά κάποιο τρόπο τους Scorpions. Βγάλανε μπαλάντες που τις εκθείασαν άνθρωποι όλων των ακουσμάτων και επιπέδων. Τα hard rock κομμάτια, τ’ ακούμε μόλις λίγοι γραφικοί. Έτσι κι οι ιστορίες αγάπης του συγγραφέα παραμένουν υψηλά στις προτιμήσεις του αναγνωστικού κοινού. Βοήθησαν βέβαια κι οι κινηματογραφικές μεταφορές. Μετά όμως σκέφτηκα μήπως ο λόγος έχει να κάνει, με το ότι πρόκειται για μια ακόμα ιστορία ενηλικίωσης, σενάριο που κουράζει.
Όμως εδώ, υπάρχουν στοιχεία που κάνουν την ιστορία να διαφέρει, να ξεφεύγει. Έχουμε την εμφανή αναπηρία κι ένα ταξίδι που οδηγεί στο συμβιβασμό και την υποκρισία, στερώντας όμως ακόμα και την ευκαιρία των φαινομενικών happy end. Σύνηθες στη ζωή, σπάνιο σε βιβλία της κατηγορίας του, τουλάχιστον για το κεντρικό πρόσωπο. Αλλά, το σημαντικότερο σημείο και ίσως αυτό που κάνει το βιβλίο να λάμπει, επειδή όμως λαμπαδιάζει. Τι το κάνει δύσκολο; Τάχα μου επειδή πλέκει ιστορίες γύρω απ’ τις πιο αμφιλεγόμενες θέσεις των Γερμανών Ιδεαλιστών; Μήπως, επειδή δε μας αρέσει ο κεντρικός χαρακτήρας; Ίσως, λοιπόν, γιατί μοιάζει να γράφτηκε σε μια εποχή που ο κόσμος κατέρρεε κι αυτό ασχολείται με έρωτες κλπ; Δεν είναι τίποτα απ’ αυτά, ειδικά το τελευταίο, δεν ευσταθεί καν.
Αυτό που το κάνει δύσκολο, που εξουθενώνει τον αναγνώστη, όσο και το συγγραφέα είναι η αντίσταση του, στη ρεαλιστική δομή. Την πολεμάει με κάθε μέσο που διαθέτει. Φτάνει απ’ το Μπροχ, ως το Μπέρνχαρτ. Μόνο που είναι πολύ αργός, πολύ στατικός, για να πεις πως πλησιάζει το Μπροχ και υπέρμετρα ‘’αξιοπρεπής’’ για να πλησιάσει το Μπέρνχαρτ. Αντισυμβατικός όμως, είναι. Και το βιβλίο του είναι κουραστικό και θέλει κόπο για να διαβαστεί. Ίσως να το είχα παρατήσει, αν δε με ‘’γιάτρευα’’ απ’ αυτό, διαβάζοντας παράλληλα τις 11.000 βέργες κι αν εν συνεχεία, δε ‘’γιάτρευα’’ τις δικές τους πληγές, με Το πιο μεγάλο ταξίδι. Στο σύνολο του όμως, μου άρεσε. Υπήρξαν σημεία που λάτρεψα και ειδικά εκείνα, που ο συγγραφέας αντιστέκεται. Δεν αποδέχεται την κατάργηση της ρεαλιστικής δομής και γι’ αυτό δε μπορεί να μπει στο χώρο του μοντέρνου, ή του σουρρεάλ, με φυσικότητα. Εδώ, δίνεται μάχη, αδυσώπητη. Είναι η φύση που δεν αποδέχεται κι όμως της παραδίδεται.
Θα έλεγε κάποιος, πως αυτό μοιάζει ένα ιδανικό βιβλίο να ιντριγκάρει. Δεν υπάρχουν όμως, εξάρσεις, δεν υπάρχουν αναταράξεις. Υπάρχει μια ιστορία που ακολουθεί, σαν απόηχος μια αναπηρία που κακοφόρμισε και θα κακοφορμίσει κι άλλο και γύρω απ’ αυτό, άνθρωποι πεζοί κι ακατάλληλοι. Ξένοι και ποτέ αγαπημένοι. Αυτοί που με κάθε κόστος πρέπει να καμουφλάρουν το επίπεδο σε λόφο, αγνοώντας τους λόφους. Κι ο κεντρικός χαρακτήρας, σε όλα αυτά, ψάχνει για να καταλάβει, ψάχνει για να αγαπηθεί και σταδιακά χάνει κάθε σημείο της προσωπικής φωνής του, στην ανάγκη να ανήκει, να έχει μια ευκαιρία να ζήσει εκείνο που σε διαλύει. Δε θέλέι να μιλήσει για το σοκαριστικό, θέλει να το ζήσει. Και το χάνει, παραδιδόμενος στωικά, σε ανθρώπους που δε θέλουν το αληθινό, αν δεν είναι εύσχημο και ήσυχο.
Ήταν ένα απ’ τα κουραστικότερα 4 που έχω δώσει. Το πάλεψα, παρότι συχνά δε με άγγιζε. Κι αυτό που μου μένει, αυτό που έχω κάνει εικόνα κι όταν κοιτώ το βιβλίο το κάνω ξανά, είναι το ζευγάρι στο λιβάδι με τα μάτια της θείας πίσω του μακριά, να προσπαθούν να εστιάσουν σ’ αυτό και να είναι εκεί, πραγματικά εκεί. Ακόμα κι αν δε φτάνουν. Ήδη, έχουν επιτύχει. Ήδη η ανάπηρη που υποσκέλισε την πνευματικότητα της, έχει βιάσει την ψυχή τους και περιμένουν με τρόμο το χλευασμό της, ο ανάπηρος και η νεκροζώντανη μνηστή του.
Ο θάνατος για τον ήρωα του Φόρστερ, δεν είναι μια κατάσταση που μας επιτρέπει να την αντιμετωπίζουμε στωικά, ή παθητικά, είναι:
Ναι, αγαπημένη μου Άγκνες, βεβαίως, αλλά πρέπει να βεβαιωθώ ότι το σκέφτεσαι. Αυτό είναι το χειρότερο πράγμα που μπορεί να σου συμβεί στη ζωή, γι’ αυτό πρέπει να το αντιμετωπίσεις – πρέπει να το σκέφτεσαι. Όλοι, θα σου λένε κάνε κουράγιο, έχε εμπιστοσύνη στο χρόνο. Όχι, όχι. Κάνουν λάθος. Αντιμετώπισε το
Κι ίσως, η μοναχική θλίψη είναι η μοναδική ευκαιρία ν’ ακούσουμε τον εαυτό μας τελικά.
Η επόμενη ιδέα του συγγραφέα, που αποτελεί έναν απ’ τους πυρήνες του βιβλίου είναι πως με κάθε κόστος, εκείνο που μας ταράζει, το αληθινό, το πιθανόν να μας αναγκάσει, να διαφέρουμε, πρέπει να το εξορίσουμε, να το κρύψουμε και τότε Η χαρά της ήταν τώρα ανυπόκριτη και έτρεξε πάνω για να τη μεταδώσει στο Ρίκι .
Απ’ την αρχή, μου έκαναν εντύπωση οι χαμηλές βαθμολογίες του βιβλίου και οι κακές κριτικές ( και εννοώ πως προσωπικά αγνοώ τις κριτικές που θέλουν να μεταδώσουν το δικό τους, αγνοώντας τη φωνή τους με τον τρόπο που την έχει ενισχύσει το βιβλίο που διάβασαν. Κρύβουν αυτό που είναι σημαντικό, για χάρη του εντυπωσιακού. Αυτές οι κριτικές δε μ’ ενδιαφέρουν. Είναι άχρηστες. Μου δείχνουν πως το βιβλίο δεν είχε τη δύναμη που του αποδόθηκε, γιατί κράτησε ένα χαμηλό πνεύμα – και όλοι είμαστε χαμηλά πνεύματα – χαμηλά ). Μου θύμιζε κατά κάποιο τρόπο τους Scorpions. Βγάλανε μπαλάντες που τις εκθείασαν άνθρωποι όλων των ακουσμάτων και επιπέδων. Τα hard rock κομμάτια, τ’ ακούμε μόλις λίγοι γραφικοί. Έτσι κι οι ιστορίες αγάπης του συγγραφέα παραμένουν υψηλά στις προτιμήσεις του αναγνωστικού κοινού. Βοήθησαν βέβαια κι οι κινηματογραφικές μεταφορές. Μετά όμως σκέφτηκα μήπως ο λόγος έχει να κάνει, με το ότι πρόκειται για μια ακόμα ιστορία ενηλικίωσης, σενάριο που κουράζει.
Όμως εδώ, υπάρχουν στοιχεία που κάνουν την ιστορία να διαφέρει, να ξεφεύγει. Έχουμε την εμφανή αναπηρία κι ένα ταξίδι που οδηγεί στο συμβιβασμό και την υποκρισία, στερώντας όμως ακόμα και την ευκαιρία των φαινομενικών happy end. Σύνηθες στη ζωή, σπάνιο σε βιβλία της κατηγορίας του, τουλάχιστον για το κεντρικό πρόσωπο. Αλλά, το σημαντικότερο σημείο και ίσως αυτό που κάνει το βιβλίο να λάμπει, επειδή όμως λαμπαδιάζει. Τι το κάνει δύσκολο; Τάχα μου επειδή πλέκει ιστορίες γύρω απ’ τις πιο αμφιλεγόμενες θέσεις των Γερμανών Ιδεαλιστών; Μήπως, επειδή δε μας αρέσει ο κεντρικός χαρακτήρας; Ίσως, λοιπόν, γιατί μοιάζει να γράφτηκε σε μια εποχή που ο κόσμος κατέρρεε κι αυτό ασχολείται με έρωτες κλπ; Δεν είναι τίποτα απ’ αυτά, ειδικά το τελευταίο, δεν ευσταθεί καν.
Αυτό που το κάνει δύσκολο, που εξουθενώνει τον αναγνώστη, όσο και το συγγραφέα είναι η αντίσταση του, στη ρεαλιστική δομή. Την πολεμάει με κάθε μέσο που διαθέτει. Φτάνει απ’ το Μπροχ, ως το Μπέρνχαρτ. Μόνο που είναι πολύ αργός, πολύ στατικός, για να πεις πως πλησιάζει το Μπροχ και υπέρμετρα ‘’αξιοπρεπής’’ για να πλησιάσει το Μπέρνχαρτ. Αντισυμβατικός όμως, είναι. Και το βιβλίο του είναι κουραστικό και θέλει κόπο για να διαβαστεί. Ίσως να το είχα παρατήσει, αν δε με ‘’γιάτρευα’’ απ’ αυτό, διαβάζοντας παράλληλα τις 11.000 βέργες κι αν εν συνεχεία, δε ‘’γιάτρευα’’ τις δικές τους πληγές, με Το πιο μεγάλο ταξίδι. Στο σύνολο του όμως, μου άρεσε. Υπήρξαν σημεία που λάτρεψα και ειδικά εκείνα, που ο συγγραφέας αντιστέκεται. Δεν αποδέχεται την κατάργηση της ρεαλιστικής δομής και γι’ αυτό δε μπορεί να μπει στο χώρο του μοντέρνου, ή του σουρρεάλ, με φυσικότητα. Εδώ, δίνεται μάχη, αδυσώπητη. Είναι η φύση που δεν αποδέχεται κι όμως της παραδίδεται.
Θα έλεγε κάποιος, πως αυτό μοιάζει ένα ιδανικό βιβλίο να ιντριγκάρει. Δεν υπάρχουν όμως, εξάρσεις, δεν υπάρχουν αναταράξεις. Υπάρχει μια ιστορία που ακολουθεί, σαν απόηχος μια αναπηρία που κακοφόρμισε και θα κακοφορμίσει κι άλλο και γύρω απ’ αυτό, άνθρωποι πεζοί κι ακατάλληλοι. Ξένοι και ποτέ αγαπημένοι. Αυτοί που με κάθε κόστος πρέπει να καμουφλάρουν το επίπεδο σε λόφο, αγνοώντας τους λόφους. Κι ο κεντρικός χαρακτήρας, σε όλα αυτά, ψάχνει για να καταλάβει, ψάχνει για να αγαπηθεί και σταδιακά χάνει κάθε σημείο της προσωπικής φωνής του, στην ανάγκη να ανήκει, να έχει μια ευκαιρία να ζήσει εκείνο που σε διαλύει. Δε θέλέι να μιλήσει για το σοκαριστικό, θέλει να το ζήσει. Και το χάνει, παραδιδόμενος στωικά, σε ανθρώπους που δε θέλουν το αληθινό, αν δεν είναι εύσχημο και ήσυχο.
Ήταν ένα απ’ τα κουραστικότερα 4 που έχω δώσει. Το πάλεψα, παρότι συχνά δε με άγγιζε. Κι αυτό που μου μένει, αυτό που έχω κάνει εικόνα κι όταν κοιτώ το βιβλίο το κάνω ξανά, είναι το ζευγάρι στο λιβάδι με τα μάτια της θείας πίσω του μακριά, να προσπαθούν να εστιάσουν σ’ αυτό και να είναι εκεί, πραγματικά εκεί. Ακόμα κι αν δε φτάνουν. Ήδη, έχουν επιτύχει. Ήδη η ανάπηρη που υποσκέλισε την πνευματικότητα της, έχει βιάσει την ψυχή τους και περιμένουν με τρόμο το χλευασμό της, ο ανάπηρος και η νεκροζώντανη μνηστή του.
May 19, 2016
As shocking as it may be, I'd never read anything by E.M. Forster. I happened upon my dusty, 1922 printed copy by luck as I browsed through one of the buildings in my favorite used book store, The Book Barn in Niantic, CT. What drew me to the book at the time was the following blurb printed among the opening pages: A New Directions Wartime Book This Complete Copyright Edition Is Produced In Full Compliance With The Government's Regulations For Conserving Paper And Other Essential Materials. I'd never seen that blurb before but figured if the Government thought it was valuable enough to waste paper and ink and binding materials on at the time, it was probably still worth a read today.
Anyway I write about the plot here is going to sound too simple to be appreciated. But that's the thing about good literature I think. It doesn't take sweeping plots and mass extinctions or explosions to be great. There's a lot to be said for the language of a piece. Here, it's landscapes that get the sweeping lines and human nature, when described get brief, stark lines. Philosophy and poetry and prose in one.
The story centers around Rickie,whom we meet at the start of his academic career as a student in Cambridge. An orphan who is nonetheless surrounded by the friendship of his peers, including Ansell. Forster contrasts the varied upbringings of these two boys while making us as readers decide whether a cow still exists before its being viewed. Ansell, having been brought up to follow his passions, in this case, Philosophy, believes yes. Rickie is more focused out the window of his dorm room. The novel follows Rickie primarily as the years pass and how he came to know and love and marry and then not love Agnes. We hear about how Ansell's faring once in awhile and about the academic failures he experiences. We come to understand why Ansell disliked Agnes so much and to appreciate even more how great a friend he was for Rickie when Rickie was told of a family scandal concerning one of his parents.
I experienced each page as if a very distinct voice was reading the story to me. I was prompted many times to ask myself if I would have behaved the same way in Rickie's situation. Even Agnes, who can appear as cold and uncaring and unlikeable, has her charms. Forster's entreats us to forgive her her actions towards Rickie and family and he explains why so very bluntly it's impossible to truly hate her. It's Forster's voice that perfectly illustrates the vicissitudes of Rickie's life, physically and emotionally. We're made aware of his physical deformity right away, but his struggle with whether he wants to be a part of society as he's expected to be by virtue of his inheritance or to follow his own inner dreams of connecting more with the natural world prove a greater focus.
"The Longest Journey" is a novel you just have to experience to know what it's about. It's kind of like life in that way.
Anyway I write about the plot here is going to sound too simple to be appreciated. But that's the thing about good literature I think. It doesn't take sweeping plots and mass extinctions or explosions to be great. There's a lot to be said for the language of a piece. Here, it's landscapes that get the sweeping lines and human nature, when described get brief, stark lines. Philosophy and poetry and prose in one.
The story centers around Rickie,whom we meet at the start of his academic career as a student in Cambridge. An orphan who is nonetheless surrounded by the friendship of his peers, including Ansell. Forster contrasts the varied upbringings of these two boys while making us as readers decide whether a cow still exists before its being viewed. Ansell, having been brought up to follow his passions, in this case, Philosophy, believes yes. Rickie is more focused out the window of his dorm room. The novel follows Rickie primarily as the years pass and how he came to know and love and marry and then not love Agnes. We hear about how Ansell's faring once in awhile and about the academic failures he experiences. We come to understand why Ansell disliked Agnes so much and to appreciate even more how great a friend he was for Rickie when Rickie was told of a family scandal concerning one of his parents.
I experienced each page as if a very distinct voice was reading the story to me. I was prompted many times to ask myself if I would have behaved the same way in Rickie's situation. Even Agnes, who can appear as cold and uncaring and unlikeable, has her charms. Forster's entreats us to forgive her her actions towards Rickie and family and he explains why so very bluntly it's impossible to truly hate her. It's Forster's voice that perfectly illustrates the vicissitudes of Rickie's life, physically and emotionally. We're made aware of his physical deformity right away, but his struggle with whether he wants to be a part of society as he's expected to be by virtue of his inheritance or to follow his own inner dreams of connecting more with the natural world prove a greater focus.
"The Longest Journey" is a novel you just have to experience to know what it's about. It's kind of like life in that way.
March 13, 2011
Another wonderful book from EM Forster. This is the fourth of his books that I've read and I'm in love with them all! I grew quite attached to Rickie and felt the weight of the world he was bearing. This book delivered some genuine shocks. I don't remember the last time I gasped out loud this many times in the last few pages of The Longest Journey. Forster's witticisms slay me; his sarcastic narrators never fail to make me chuckle. His books just feel so comfortable! Highly recommended.
February 22, 2009
I love Forster. This novel is not as tidy as his others, but I liked it nonetheless. The ideas seemed to have more passion behind them, even if they weren't brought together with the same clarity as in the other books.
November 21, 2013
“Preserving Family Secrets—Honoring Family Dreams”
This 1907 novel probes the gradual maturation of a young Cambridge student, Ricki Elliot—grappling with various life issues. It is in his favorite haunt, a delightful dell some distance from the ‘Varsity, that he recounts to his male peers the sad tale of his childhood and youth; for this fellow, smaller and lame, is now without parents. His very nickname was his father’s cruel jest re the boy’s rickety locomotion. Prone to daydreaming about being a writer, but lacking the nerve to embark on this as a career--for fear of ridicule and financial failure--he allows himself to be swayed toward other possible careers by people whom he respects—or feels he ought to--including a dowager aunt and pretty Agnes--a dryad in the dell--whom he’s known for years. A self-styled philosopher named Stewart Ansell is his closest friend at Cambridge—which Ricki later views as an abode of peace—the only place the orphan considers Home.
At first glance this novel appears the story of personal failure and misguided choices. What to study, whom to marry and where to live--yet there is more than these superficialities lying beneath the roadbed. Referencing a poem by Shelley the title refers not to a tangible journey of miles; rather to the soul’s journey of self discovery. Ricki’s disastrous career as a master at a 2nd rate boarding school, combined with a gradually loveless marriage to a woman who denies him his dreams of writing, make him realize that he is slowly writhing in a kind of spiritual bondage to her ambitious intellectual brute of an older brother. For this is a novel really treats the subject of Brothers and their role in life.
Family secrets are difficult to keep under wraps for many years—gradually eroding the bearer’s emotional equilibrium. The human desire to unburden oneself—either out of guilt or for mean revenge—can not be denied for ever. Once the secret slips or is blurted out--how to wrestle with the consequences? Shattered by the discovery (leaked by a vengeful aunt) that the odious boy who bullied him at school turns out to be his own half brother Ricki is tormented by indecision on how he should react publicly. His stuffy wife, housemistress in her brother’s “house” is ambitious both to protect the family name but also to ensure that Ricki is not cheated out of his inheritance by this upstart “beggar on horseback.” Alas, Ricki only knows Half the truth, while that scamp, Stephen Wonham, is kept in total ignorance of his illicit provenance.
Whom to tell and how much, when and most of all—Why--consumes the mental efforts of the young, childless Elliotts, as Ricki undertakes,pianfully alone, the longest journey: to discover what kind of man he is and how he should treat his newly-found incorrigible brother. Narrated against the backdrop of Salisbury’s chalky downs, the plot slowly unfolds to a startling pitch of withheld information and dramatic denouements. Toying with readers’ lack of knowledge EMF reveals that the brothers’ lives are inevitably intertwined, even as the distant ancient Roman Rings.
(November 21, 2013. I welcome dialogue with teachers.)
This 1907 novel probes the gradual maturation of a young Cambridge student, Ricki Elliot—grappling with various life issues. It is in his favorite haunt, a delightful dell some distance from the ‘Varsity, that he recounts to his male peers the sad tale of his childhood and youth; for this fellow, smaller and lame, is now without parents. His very nickname was his father’s cruel jest re the boy’s rickety locomotion. Prone to daydreaming about being a writer, but lacking the nerve to embark on this as a career--for fear of ridicule and financial failure--he allows himself to be swayed toward other possible careers by people whom he respects—or feels he ought to--including a dowager aunt and pretty Agnes--a dryad in the dell--whom he’s known for years. A self-styled philosopher named Stewart Ansell is his closest friend at Cambridge—which Ricki later views as an abode of peace—the only place the orphan considers Home.
At first glance this novel appears the story of personal failure and misguided choices. What to study, whom to marry and where to live--yet there is more than these superficialities lying beneath the roadbed. Referencing a poem by Shelley the title refers not to a tangible journey of miles; rather to the soul’s journey of self discovery. Ricki’s disastrous career as a master at a 2nd rate boarding school, combined with a gradually loveless marriage to a woman who denies him his dreams of writing, make him realize that he is slowly writhing in a kind of spiritual bondage to her ambitious intellectual brute of an older brother. For this is a novel really treats the subject of Brothers and their role in life.
Family secrets are difficult to keep under wraps for many years—gradually eroding the bearer’s emotional equilibrium. The human desire to unburden oneself—either out of guilt or for mean revenge—can not be denied for ever. Once the secret slips or is blurted out--how to wrestle with the consequences? Shattered by the discovery (leaked by a vengeful aunt) that the odious boy who bullied him at school turns out to be his own half brother Ricki is tormented by indecision on how he should react publicly. His stuffy wife, housemistress in her brother’s “house” is ambitious both to protect the family name but also to ensure that Ricki is not cheated out of his inheritance by this upstart “beggar on horseback.” Alas, Ricki only knows Half the truth, while that scamp, Stephen Wonham, is kept in total ignorance of his illicit provenance.
Whom to tell and how much, when and most of all—Why--consumes the mental efforts of the young, childless Elliotts, as Ricki undertakes,pianfully alone, the longest journey: to discover what kind of man he is and how he should treat his newly-found incorrigible brother. Narrated against the backdrop of Salisbury’s chalky downs, the plot slowly unfolds to a startling pitch of withheld information and dramatic denouements. Toying with readers’ lack of knowledge EMF reveals that the brothers’ lives are inevitably intertwined, even as the distant ancient Roman Rings.
(November 21, 2013. I welcome dialogue with teachers.)
November 8, 2018
Impossible to rate. Often four, so I'm going with four. I actively hated the Stephen plot, but liked the friendship-versus-marriage story, which did friendship extremely well. Even if Forster seemed hesitant to advance its claims against the societal hegemony of marriage.
He also seemed hesitant to trust his university set and back them against the schoolyard bullies they thought they had left behind, but whom they meet again in adult life. Rickie's a scribbler of Greek-mythology-inspired stories, his friend Ansell a shopkeeper-class philosopher (who fails his PhD-type thing twice, but is no worse for that). These two were great, but they both succumb to an awe of more 'animal', athletic and instinctual men. In Gerald and in that botch called Stephen, they reward a bully with star-struck admiration. Seriously, Forster, I hope you grew out of that. In a not unrelated feature, Rickie's lame, and although a hero with a disability might have been rarely done in 1907 (?), his internalised ableism results in a few wretched sentences.
There's plenty of humour in the writing, and shenanigans in the plot. You never know what to expect out of him, so I found it entirely untedious.
He also seemed hesitant to trust his university set and back them against the schoolyard bullies they thought they had left behind, but whom they meet again in adult life. Rickie's a scribbler of Greek-mythology-inspired stories, his friend Ansell a shopkeeper-class philosopher (who fails his PhD-type thing twice, but is no worse for that). These two were great, but they both succumb to an awe of more 'animal', athletic and instinctual men. In Gerald and in that botch called Stephen, they reward a bully with star-struck admiration. Seriously, Forster, I hope you grew out of that. In a not unrelated feature, Rickie's lame, and although a hero with a disability might have been rarely done in 1907 (?), his internalised ableism results in a few wretched sentences.
There's plenty of humour in the writing, and shenanigans in the plot. You never know what to expect out of him, so I found it entirely untedious.
February 4, 2016
After all the praise heaped on this book, I was disappointed. It's the story of a young man who discovers that his ideals and reality don't have much to do with each other. We meet lots of characters who seem to personify different social strata and different philosophical and social points of view, but not one of them seems to have any sense, much less be at all sympathetic. That doesn't mean that Forrester didn't let off some zingers of lines, but I didn't come away feeling that anyone had learned a darn thing from life, especially the hero, who was so easily swayed and so lacking in moral courage despite his high-flown ideals. Supposedly he overcomes all that in the end, but I wasn't convinced.
Oh well, up next is A Room with a View, which I've read many times before. It's one where the social philosophy doesn't take over the plot like it does in this one.
Oh well, up next is A Room with a View, which I've read many times before. It's one where the social philosophy doesn't take over the plot like it does in this one.
February 24, 2015
This started off pretty good for me, then quickly turned into somewhat of a slog. However, I zoomed through the second half and ended up liking it. Boy, what a restrictive downer of a story!
August 10, 2011
Heart-breaking and thought-provoking, this is vintage Forster.
April 7, 2019
Very different to the other Forster works I've read so far with some unusually dramatic plot twists, but the writing is beautiful and subtly funny as usual.
January 24, 2021
The last of E.M. Forster’s novels I had left to read and even though this is said to be his personal favorite, I’m afraid it fell short for me. There are the usual up tight Edwardian characters with secrets unspoken and revealed, passions repressed, some beautiful writing and a mix of the comic and the tragic- although here we seem much heavier on the tragic. It focuses on Rickie, a young lame Cambridge student who wants to write fiction and his relationships with those around him- Ansell a philosophical fellow student, Agnes and Herbert, long time friends, his aunt Mrs Failing and her companion Stephen.
Forster usually likes to keep his tragedy until the end of his novels but here it seems to be littered throughout and the restrained way in which it is largely dealt with has the effect of making us care little either. Characterization and dialogue are always his strengths but here there is less wit and humor and more philosophy, some interesting discussions on marriage, for the book is named after Shelley’s idea of ‘the longest journey’ being the life you spent with one partner, but I have to say sometimes I just got lost or missed the point I assumed he was trying to make.
The book is is in three sections and when it turns to the middle section and life at a prestigious boarding school, it became more engaging and the characters become more complex, even those you love to dislike have their sympathetic side. The secret revealed in part one is further explored and gains momentum in part two and we have some kind of resolution in part three although it doesn’t end well for all.
It feels like a book that requires a reread or to be studied in a class like many of Forster’s novels. I’m often left with the sense that I missed something when I read him but in this one perhaps more than most and although there was much to enjoy and appreciate, this won’t go down as a favorite of mine.
Forster usually likes to keep his tragedy until the end of his novels but here it seems to be littered throughout and the restrained way in which it is largely dealt with has the effect of making us care little either. Characterization and dialogue are always his strengths but here there is less wit and humor and more philosophy, some interesting discussions on marriage, for the book is named after Shelley’s idea of ‘the longest journey’ being the life you spent with one partner, but I have to say sometimes I just got lost or missed the point I assumed he was trying to make.
The book is is in three sections and when it turns to the middle section and life at a prestigious boarding school, it became more engaging and the characters become more complex, even those you love to dislike have their sympathetic side. The secret revealed in part one is further explored and gains momentum in part two and we have some kind of resolution in part three although it doesn’t end well for all.
It feels like a book that requires a reread or to be studied in a class like many of Forster’s novels. I’m often left with the sense that I missed something when I read him but in this one perhaps more than most and although there was much to enjoy and appreciate, this won’t go down as a favorite of mine.
November 27, 2024
On reading this for the second time, I appreciated more fully how EM Forster's second novel started to explore two themes presented more dramatically in, for instance, 'Howards End' and 'A Passage To India' - middle-class morality regarding affairs out of wedlock and illegitimacy, and the effects of a spiritual and psychological crisis.
Young Rickie Elliot's 'Marabar Caves' experience takes place within the circles of Stonehenge, where his aunt casually and cruelly lets drop the bombshell that the young illegitimate ward, Stephen, to whom she's given a home is actually his half-brother. To Rickie - sensitive, philosophical, Cambridge-educated and newly married - this opens up a dark and uncomfortable awareness of what lies outside of his own ivory tower, and an obligation to interact with the sordidness of the real world.
Stephen Wonham himself is a handsome, straightforward, honourable but pugnacious young man who is absolutely without guile, and who, whilst aware of his illegitimate status, is reasonablu educated, respects himself and sees no reason to kowtow to those who may consider themselves his betters. His character is, apparently, based on Forster's own encounter with a shepherd lad in Wiltshire in 1904, three years before 'The Longest Journey' was published.
It takes the intervention of Rickie's maverick philosopher friend from his Cambridge days, Stewart Ansell, to make him realise that his half-brother has as much right to love and acceptance in life as he has himself, though the revelation that he is his mother's son, rather than his father's as Rickie has automatically presumed, almost breaks him.
It's a meandering, introspective read with a sad ending, and doesn't quite achieve the emotional authenticity of Forster's later writing, especially as regards female characters - but it was, apparently, the author's favourite of his novels and as such I think it should be more widely appreciated.
Young Rickie Elliot's 'Marabar Caves' experience takes place within the circles of Stonehenge, where his aunt casually and cruelly lets drop the bombshell that the young illegitimate ward, Stephen, to whom she's given a home is actually his half-brother. To Rickie - sensitive, philosophical, Cambridge-educated and newly married - this opens up a dark and uncomfortable awareness of what lies outside of his own ivory tower, and an obligation to interact with the sordidness of the real world.
Stephen Wonham himself is a handsome, straightforward, honourable but pugnacious young man who is absolutely without guile, and who, whilst aware of his illegitimate status, is reasonablu educated, respects himself and sees no reason to kowtow to those who may consider themselves his betters. His character is, apparently, based on Forster's own encounter with a shepherd lad in Wiltshire in 1904, three years before 'The Longest Journey' was published.
It takes the intervention of Rickie's maverick philosopher friend from his Cambridge days, Stewart Ansell, to make him realise that his half-brother has as much right to love and acceptance in life as he has himself, though the revelation that he is his mother's son, rather than his father's as Rickie has automatically presumed, almost breaks him.
It's a meandering, introspective read with a sad ending, and doesn't quite achieve the emotional authenticity of Forster's later writing, especially as regards female characters - but it was, apparently, the author's favourite of his novels and as such I think it should be more widely appreciated.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 308 reviews