The middle of the journey

by Lionel Trilling

Published in 1947, as the cold war was heating up, Lionel Trillingâ 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.

Genres: Fiction, Politics, 20th Century, Literature, Classics, Novels, Literary Fiction

310 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1947

About the author

Lionel Mordecai Trilling was an American literary critic, short story writer, essayist, and teacher. He was one of the leading U.S. critics of the 20th century who analyzed the contemporary cultural, social, and political implications of literature. With his wife Diana Trilling (née Rubin), whom he married in 1929, he was a member of the New York Intellectuals and contributor to the Partisan Review.

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unsung classic, fortunately reissued by NYRB. The book is about ideology and human nature and everything in-between. Published in 1947, the ideology being analyzed is that of the U.S. Communist Party; the human nature under the severest scrutiny are the elite practitioners of leftism, in particular their engagement with members of the working class - all of whom they almost completely misunderstand. The Middle of the Journey in many ways predicted the soon-to-come debate about communism and its moneyed advocates that would be front and center during the wretched McCarthy hearings. This highly intellectual yet emotionally resonant novel is particularly relevant today, as the tenets of socialism rise again in America. And all that said, "communism" may be the ideology under scrutiny and the "elites" that make up half of the cast may be the individuals analyzed... but this book is not specifically about one ideology, nor is it about one class of people. It is a morality play that used a contemporaneous ideology and its elite practitioners as its subjects; despite that specificity, the underlying themes of the book are timeless.

The architect John Laskell has suffered twice over, first from the untimely death of his lover and then from a debilitating illness that had him bedbound for weeks. During his somewhat desultory recovery, John finds himself in a liminal space, questioning his former allegiances and goals, his entire state of mind, and now tentatively open to reevaluating his world, the people in it, and any new experiences that may come his way. In this rather fragile state, he goes to visit his caring friends Nancy and Arthur at their new summer home in the country.

Examining the cast of characters is perhaps the easiest method to use when examining the novel itself. Lionel Trilling is a master at complicated characterization in which each character is given depth and nuance; no character is a two-dimensional hero or villain. And yet each of them is also a direct representative of a particular way of being and of engaging with the world.

☭ Nancy - a young mother and a committed soldier of the Party. Nancy is both kind and acerbic. Her idealism is profound, as is her inability to understand the interiority of human beings. The cause is all with Nancy, a completely binary thinker. She regularly demonstrates the well-intentioned, hopelessly naive condescension of the elite. In many ways, her perspective is the opposite of John's - she is the oak, he is the reed.

☭ Arthur - Nancy's husband is a much more minor character than his wife, but an important one nonetheless. He is the pragmatic and cautious side of progressivism, a person who believes in the value system of communism, but would be unlikely to openly acclaim the controversial Party. A quietly ambitious fellow who will use elements of leftism within a larger liberal agenda as he sees fit.

☭ Maxim - a former member of the Party's inner circle. Maxim is all too familiar with the machinations of Communism overseas and was the Party's creature for many years, embroiled in various plots and plans. Maxim has left the Party and for a good portion of the novel is hurriedly reestablishing himself as normie liberal, due to his paranoia over being 'disappeared' by his former masters. Maxim's exit from the Party does not go over well with Nancy and Arthur, to say the least. They dismiss his fears as insanity.

☭ Kermit - John's rich friend and eventually Maxim's benefactor, an industrialist and publisher of a progressive newspaper. Kermit has both an innate decency and cluelessness. Despite being to the manor born, he simply wants to do good. He has plenty of money to do just that.

⚒ Nurse Paine and the Folgers - John's caretakers. Nurse Paine was his steady support during his sickness; Mrs. Folger is mistress of the house where John stays during his rural visit. Both reify gender constructs and gender reality. Theirs is the perspective of "men will be men" and subtle even unconscious games of dominance & submission; political ideology is not a concern. Mr. Folger is a more minor character, but one with a significant function: the working class man who appears satisfied with his life, who has a genuine kindness, and who has no issues whatsoever in being at the beck & call of his wealthy benefactress.

⚒ "Duck" - an unreliable and untrustworthy handyman. Clever Duck is lauded by his employers Nancy & Arthur as a symbol of the Working Class: all rough edges and rough charm; the sort of man they are striving to support; an openly sexual fellow whose crudity, drunkenness, and laziness are forever excusable by them. He is the Common Man, after all. Arthur and especially Nancy's rose-colored glasses inhibit their ability to see his contempt for them, his cunning, and his dissatisfaction with his own life.

⚒ Emily Caldwell - Duck's wife and John's potential romantic interest. Alongside John, Emily is the book's most complex character. She appears oddly content with her life, even tranquil, despite an unloving husband and scarce resources; perhaps this is due to her devotion to her daughter and her ability to make the best with what she's got. An open-minded and humane woman mildly interested in philosophy and the arts, she is nevertheless regularly ridiculed by Nancy & Arthur as trying to rise above her station. To them, Duck is a working class 'natural' while his wife is a hopelessly ignorant striver.

⚙

It was fascinating watching these characters through John's eyes as he constantly appraises and re-appraises them and, through them, himself, his own thoughts and perspectives. The rich characterization itself was genuinely exciting. I was often concerned or fascinated or made tense by what was happening to each of them, what was coming out of their mouths, how they interacted with and related to John and to each other. The book is a master class in having characters who are both symbolic and utterly realistic.

What is the book's lesson? Surely a book as profoundly concerned with politics as this one must have a moral perspective. But the book's strength is that a specific message is not easily parsed. Despite a clearly critical view on some elements of communism and The Party, the book does not slam leftism or progressivism, it does not caricature. Nor is it a conservative book. Surprisingly, The Middle of the Journey came to feel like an apolitical book about politics - about how ideology impacts perception and how perception impacts reality. It is a story about the psychosocial issues of its characters and about the how and the why that they understand their world(s).

👷

Dianoia is step-by-step reasoning; noesis is intuitive understanding. Dianoia is analytical and based on hypothesizing; noesis is a direct grasp of concepts such as the idea of Good. Noesis is the gut; dianoia is the discursive mind. Usually, noesis is seen to be superior: it is the highest form of knowledge, while dianoia is a stepping stone, the long penultimate before noesis' ultimate. The most compelling aspect of The Middle of the Journey - and, perhaps, its radical moral lesson - is that it is dianoia that is most needed when seeking to understand each other and the world itself, let alone when understanding politics. To not practice dianoia is arrogant folly; to practice it means that life will always be a journey of trying to understand. To always be in that liminal middle space...

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

I knew, or believed, that this novel had some connection to Whittaker Chambers, so I went into it thinking it would be some kind of re-telling, with just the names changed. But it's not. In an unnecessarily long introduction, the author explains that a character in the book - Gifford Maxim - is based on Chambers. But it's not a story of Hiss and Nixon and that whole drama. It is, though, a story of American Communism.

That said, it is not a defense, nor a repudiation, of communism. It is not a parable of good versus evil. There are no capitalists in the story. Some characters are well enough off, but every one who speaks is some shade of left-leaning. True, the dialogue is often dialectical, or what I believe dialectics to be, but that doesn't stop it from being a novel. To-wit: there is sexual tension, an adultery, a bit of humor, an endearing child, a shocking death, self-reflection. It was written in 1947 and it has a feel of that time. Everybody smokes and drinks, even the pregnant lady; and slapping a child in a crowd of people is considered parenting.

Given the time, and the political paranoia, I would have thought that some plot-twist would involve the government at conflict with the ideology. But no, the tension is all internal within the shades of idealistic thought. It culminates with this universal debate: is Society or the individual ultimately responsible. Maxim speaks:

And so you and I stand opposed. For you--no responsibility for the individual, but no forgiveness. For me--ultimate, absolute responsibility for the individual, but mercy.

The main character responds:

An absolute freedom from responsibility--that much of a child none of us can be. An absolute responsibility--that much of a divine or metaphysical essence none of us has.

I don't often delve into political theory, preferring to make fun of it all, when I just don't conveniently turn my head. But this was thought-provoking and the current discords intruded, bringing the story's pulse up to date.

[James Henderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Laskell himself was committed to no party, but he nevertheless faced reality in the busy life of committees. He was what was then known by radicals as a 'sincere liberal'"(p 37)

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 (radical and otherwise) 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 about other seemingly more mundane matters, which take up most of the story (in his introduction to the 1975 edition, included here, Trilling comments about the character of Gifford Maxim:
"He might therefore be thought of as having moved for a time in the ambiance of history even though he could scarcely be called a historical figure; for that he clearly was not of sufficient consequence. This person was Whittaker Chambers. . . only a few months after my novel was published. . . the Hiss case broke upon the nation and the world and Chambers became beyond any doubt an historical figure."(pp xv-xvi))
That Chambers was the model for Maxim was intended by Trilling, but he claims that he did not know Alger Hiss and did not use him as a model for another character named Arthur Croom who, in retrospect has an uncanny resemblance to Hiss. This, presumably, was merely fortuitous.
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.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trilling's only novel, The Middle of the Journey takes place in New York and Connecticut during the mid-1940s at a time when communism and socialism were widely endorsed by intellectuals and other liberals. One of the main characters, Gifford Maxim, is loosely (or not so loosely) based on Whittaker Chambers, the communist defector who accused Alger Hiss of espionage, thereby prompting one of the most sensational trials in U.S. history. After repudiating communism, Maxim does an about-face in his political views and becomes an outspoken advocate of conservative values and religion. In the process, he forces his liberal friends, including John Laskell, the novel's central figure, and Arthur and Nancy Croom, Laskell's compatriots, to examine the genuineness of their views. Ultimately, the book is about the potential hypocrisy among middle and upper class individuals espousing liberal or especially revolutionary ideas, an issue that Trilling, an acknowledged liberal spokesperson, struggled with during his lifetime.

[J. Alfred · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book about politics and the idea of death and how they relate. Very, very interesting, and very much relevant to our lives today, because we certainly haven't gotten any more comfortable with the idea that 100% of us die than we were seventy years ago.
It's not a great novel--it's not worldview-changing like Dostoeveski or life-building like Dickens or calmly omnisciently benevloant like Austen, but it's flawless while being hyper-aware of itself as a literary creation. The characters, action, and dialouge are all believable, and the book is pretty much guaranteed to make you think about your own thought processes and way of believing things more intently.

[Elizabeth Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

in the middle of In the Middle of the Journey and loving it. Sheepishly admit to having read very little Trilling criticism, but so far very enamored of his fiction! And what's to hate about a novel with a hero who is an overanalytical 1930s liberal with communist sympathies, raised in LARCHMONT and now living in boho charm in Greenwich Village?

[Peter Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please give me a helpful vote at Amazon -

https://www.amazon.com/review/RF4EPKE...


I came to this novel after immersing myself in books about the Hiss-Chambers case. As part of my reading, I discovered that the famous literary critic Lionel Trilling had written a novel that had a character based on Whittaker Chambers. I was fascinated by the fact that Chambers was sufficiently well-known in literary circles to be the basis of a character in a novel. Equally fascinating, this book was written and published before Chambers came to national attention in the summer of 1947. Nonetheless, the character in The Middle of the Journey and the character disclosed in Chambers' biography "Witness" seem to be the same person.

In the 1975 preface, Trilling explains that his original plan was to write about death, but after his Chambers-based character the story took on a new direction. This division was clear to me. The first part of the book established the character of the narrator, John Laskell. Laskell is thirty-three years old and is vaguely associated with "planning." He has written a book and recently survived a debilitating attack of Scarlet Fever that could have killed him. He had a lover who died of pneumonia a short time before.

I was reading this book as much, if not more, for historical flavor as for its literary qualities. The first thing I noticed was how easy it was to die in the 1930s. Back then, people - young people - died suddenly of diseases that we would cure with anti-biotics. I also wonder if Laskell's Scarlet Fever was a memory of a Scarlet Fever epidemic in the 1930s in New York. I remember my grandmother talking about how her young children survived Scarlet Fever, while other children died. This was also in New York in the 1930s.

Also, Laskell describes himself as old, and he seems old, but he's only 33. We consider 33 to still be young in our day and age.

Laskell leaves New York to spend the summer in the country with his friends, the Crooms. Arthur is a brilliant economist in his late 20s and Nancy is his 24 year old wife, and both are committed to Communism - the Party - although they are not actually members. Laskell is a liberal who admires the commitment of the Communists but is not willing to sign the party papers. Before he leaves New York, Laskell is visited by his friend, Maxim Gifford, a Communist party member who performs mysterious task for the party who Laskell admires for his commitment. Gifford, however, explains that he has broken with the Party and imposes on Laskell to connect him with an employer so he can live openly and establish an "existence." Gifford fears that without an existence, the party may cause him to disappear. Laskell scoffs at this idea since the Party is composed of people who are admirably committed to revolution and improving society.

The first part of the book is really quite dreary. Mostly, we hear Laskell talk about his fear of death and how much he wants to share the experience of his near-death with others. He also watches the Crooms idealize a ne'er do well handyman named "Duck" and put down Duck's wife as being too much of a social climber for her efforts to read and discuss works of literature. Laskell is attracted to Duck's wife, Emily, and has a brief, improbable tryst with her.

Again, this is a fascinating historical-cultural study of life in the depression and the attitude of the intellectuals who actually existed and provided the seedbed for Communism and, eventually, the New Left. Trilling says that the Crooms were not based on the Hisses, that he did not know the Hisses, but it is fascinating that the Crooms would have such an unpleasant name so similar to the Hisses unpleasant name. Also, the Crooms and the Hisses seem to have been cut from the same mold of elite, intellectuals drawn to Communism because of its appeal to their romantic nature.

The book improves when Maxim Gifford returns. The book becomes by terms more philosophical and dramatic. The Crooms despise Gifford for betraying the Party. Gifford repeats his statement that the Party will murder him if it can. Laskell and the Crooms and Gifford's new boss, publisher Kermit Simpson, consistently refuse to comprehend that such nice people as Communists could actually kill anyone (although Laskell and Simpson - both liberals - eventually come to believe Gifford.) Gifford is by turns witty, intelligent and pretentious with what Laskell believes is religious mysticism. Much of the best and most philosophical dialogue is given to Gifford. Try this on for size:

"“Let Nancy speak for herself, Arthur,” Maxim said peremptorily. “Nancy thinks he did something bad. That is the source of her dilemma. And she is right, deeply right. You are right, Nancy. For that man is bad, and everything he does is bad, even if he wants it to be good.”

“Oh, come, Giff!” said Kermit. “What is this, Calvinism?”

“His will is a bad one,” said Maxim, in answer to Kermit’s expostulation, but addressing Nancy to confirm her in her perception. “His will is a bad one and what he does is bad.” Maxim spoke like a medical professor summarizing a case to the assembled students. “Nancy’s dilemma is an inevitable one. She refuses to say that Caldwell has any responsibility, any blame or guilt. And then she refuses to allow him to come near her.” Nancy was both the case and the students. “Let me show you the advantage of my system, Nancy. You won’t believe it, you won’t agree, you won’t even hear it, so there’s no danger in listening.” He paused. “You see, Nancy,” he said, “I reverse your whole process. I believe that Duck Caldwell— like you or me or any of us— is wholly responsible for his acts. Wholly. And for eternity, for everlasting. That is what gives him value in my eyes— his eternal, everlasting responsibility. His every act, to me, involves the whole universe. And when it breaks the moral law of the whole universe, I consider that his punishment might be infinite, everlasting. And yet in my system there is one thing that yours lacks. In my system, although there is never-ending responsibility, there is such a thing as mercy.”

Maxim was not finished with what he had to say, but he paused here for a moment to let the world have it full weight. He went on. “Duck can be forgiven. I can personally forgive him because I believe God can forgive him. You see, I think his will is a bad one, but not much worse, not different in kind, from other wills. And so you and I stand opposed. For you— no responsibility for the individual, but no forgiveness. For me— ultimate, absolute responsibility for the individual, but mercy. Absolute responsibility: it is the only way that men can keep their value, can be thought of as other than mere things. Those matters that Arthur speaks of— social causes, environment, education— do you think they really make a difference between one human soul and another? In the eyes of God are such differences of any meaning at all? Can you suppose that they condition His mercy? Does He hold a Doctor of Philosophy more responsible than a Master of Arts, or a high school graduate more responsible than a man who has not finished the eighth grade? Or is His mercy less to one than another?”

Laskell offers the liberal's middle ground:

"He said, “Is it really a question, Kermit? I can’t see it as a question, not really. An absolute freedom from responsibility— that much of a child none of us can be. An absolute responsibility— that much of a divine or metaphysical essence none of us is.”

If you have read Witness, you can see the parity of this dialogue in The Middle of the Journey and what Chambers says for himself in Witness. There is the same appeal to religious mercy in both. In a way, this corroboration implies that Chambers was providing a picture of himself that other people saw. Likewise, it is fascinating that Alistair Cooke describes the Chambers who testified in court as intelligent and witty, which is the same reputation that the fictional Chambers has in his alter ego Gifford in this book.

This is fascinating stuff in that the impression one gets from reading Witness and Cooke is that Chambers really wasn't well-known during his underground years. This would seem to be clearly false. In this book, Chambers' quirk of being the most public secret agent, who everyone knew was doing party duty, is skewered, but Gifford is respected by left-leaning intellectuals for his willingness to live the life that they only fantasize about.

There is also this bit of resonance between history and literature:

"above them subjectively.’ I think that is verbatim. And in the logic of the situation— it is called the inexorable logic of the situation— you were drawn only to the ideational aspects of the movement, to the emotional superstructure of the movement, not to its base in reality. So much so, that when I made one single attempt to— as you say— draw you in, to involve you in the more practical aspects of the movement, I had no success whatever. I asked three of you— John Laskell and Arthur and yourself— to do a certain thing, to receive certain letters of great importance. You all three, every one of you, refused. And when I thought that perhaps I ought not take Arthur’s refusal as valid for his wife, too, and asked you again, when you were alone, whether you would give me this help, you refused again.”

With his eyes on Nancy’s face, Laskell saw that Maxim’s odd point of honor had been communicated. He saw the puzzled, stopped look that Nancy wore as she understood what Maxim was saying to her, that he was telling her he would not even now betray her secret. She had opened her mouth to reply. She had been on the point of replying to this man she so hated. But he had stopped her, if only for this moment."

In his biography, Chambers makes a point of describing how he would ask potential patsies to do relatively trivial things for him at first to test the level of their commitment to the Cause. He described how some refused to be a letter drop, for example. He also went to great lengths - such as committing perjury - to avoid implicating the people he dealt with as a Communist in espionage.

These passages echo that history. Nancy clearly involved herself in clandestine practices and had cause to fear and resent Gifford. He openly communicates to her that he will protect her by lying.

Again, this passage was written before Chambers actually perjured himself to hold back information from the Grand Jury that Alger Hiss was a spy. Apparently, though, Chambers must have gone through this exercise - or had a character such that people believed he would - before the Hiss episode.

It is amazing that Trilling was such a keen observer of his society that he could anticipate events that would soon transpire. Perhaps a better way of putting it is that "there are no secrets." It wasn't just Hiss who was implicated, but many others. People in Trilling's social circles knew the implications of Chambers' departure from Communism and his embrace of religion during the period from 1939 to 1947. Perhaps they were just waiting for the shoe to drop.

As literature, I am not sure how this book fares. I liked it, but I liked it a lot better after the focus was moved from the gloomy Laskell to the sparkling and eccentric Gifford. I particularly liked it as a history piece that sheds some light on a time not so far away.

[Margaret Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

The deeper political meaning probably went over my head at times but generally quite enjoyed this

[jules]

dnf @ 41% 🤓

[Every Book A Picture · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, the year 2020 was a pretty wild political year, right?

And if you’ve ever lost a relationship with a loved one, friend, or acquaintance due to politics, do I have a book recommendation for you!

At one point in Lionel Trilling’s first and only novel, THE MIDDLE OF THE JOURNEY, (1947), Gifford Maxim is asked by his friend, John Laskell, to identify just when he realized his former political views were rotten.

“Maxim shrugged. ‘I’ve always known it.‘

‘You’ve always known it?’ Laskell was not sure which word he meant to emphasize.

Maxim nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said flatly. Then he said, ‘Of course, not always, but ever since I’ve been in a position to really know things. And that’s been a long time.’

‘Long enough so that now you can say that the things you told me were lies?’

‘I wasn’t lying — I was defending a position.”

Ouch!

In Trilling’s novel, the personal becomes political. And the political becomes very, very personal.

The novel follows John Laskell, a New York intellectual recovering from a serious illness, as he spends a transformative summer in the countryside with friends Arthur and Nancy Croom, staunch leftists dedicated to their cause. The tranquility of their retreat is disrupted by the arrival of Gifford Maxim, a former communist who has renounced his previous beliefs, challenging the group’s convictions and exposing deep-seated tensions.

Imagine if Henry James turned his attention to the manners and beliefs of post-WWII New York intellectuals. The story, however, is less concerned with the rights and wrongs of left and right than with the absence of integrity at the very heart of the debate.

In an era where we’re approaching another election season, and political divisions are as pronounced as ever, the themes of this book are strikingly relevant.

And maybe it serves as both guidance and a warning to us all.

Recommended.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

They don't come any better than this. I'll undoubtedly read it again, as there were sections when Gifford Maxim (modeled after Whitaker Chambers) was expounding on his beliefs and though I read some of the sections twice, I found them difficult to understand. The book is notable for it description of the intense inner feelings of practically all the characters, and one finishes the book with the feeling that enough is known about each of them to feel quite at home if one should suddenly have cause to live nearby. It's the kind of book one savors; I'd read a few pages and then want to stop to think about them awhile - or they'd remind me of times in my life when I'd been in similar situations and perhaps hadn't handled them well.

[Yisroel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this based on the strong recommendation of Ruth Wisse in her Tikvah course on the NY Intellectuals. This is an all but forgotten book about political thought and movements, particularly the support of American liberals for communism and the USSR in the 1940's, which remains relevant to the current political discourse in the US. There is much depth of thought contained in the story and dialog, about 10% of it too abstruse for me to appreciate. There were many passages that became clear after working on them a bit, and I earmarked several significant ideas to return to. It starts off very slow, the story does become engaging in a peculiar way, and the very end is puzzling.

[Steve Massey · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story works mostly through the central character's perception of what the other characters are thinking. This is extremely well done: you get a convincing impression of the motivations and reactions of the intellectuals of the time, and of how they react to the main event of the story. I don't know to what extent this reflects the historical people that some claim it does, but it is a great study of the mood of the time nevertheless.

[Deborah · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was actually my third attempt over several years. I didn't make it through to the end this time either. Trilling is a romantic masquerading as a modernist. The clerestory windows shut me down.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trilling's skilled at making explicit all of the unspoken communication that occurs beneath the surface of the most ordinary social situations. Worth a read for the his social insightfulness and perceptiveness. Also interesting from a historical-political perspective.

[Roz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A novel of ideas, chief among them that faith in politics is not too far from faith in religion, or that a “man of honor” as Trilling put it will place his country above his friends. I don’t know if I really agree, especially about how character Maxim who was largely drawn from Whittaker Chambers, or the Henry James informed style of prose. Compared to the terse style of writing coming out from his peers, I find Trilling overstuffed at times. Perhaps you’ll like it more than I did.

[Peires · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had its moments, but laboured and ultimately disappointing.

[jelli ♡]

dnf @ 41%

could not be bothered

[Jgknobler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published in 1947 but set, I believe, in the late 1930's, this novel explores the pull and the many debates among the intelligentsia over the Communist Party. One character is based on Whittaker Chambers, who defected from the Party and apparently feared for his life. Much of the novel involves the inner thoughts of its main character, a seemingly rather wealthy and well-educated man recuperating from scarlet fever. The author makes, to me, an unfortunate decision to embody the "working class" in one male character who is bamboozling his liberal employers but is really none too nice or honest, and thus the story ends up feeling quite elitist.

[Glenn Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

A novel of ideas, it is a bit of a chore to read. Not sure I followed everything. Neocon recommended and anti-communist as well. Overall, an interesting and thought provoking read.

[Roger Lohmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for the first time in 2012. The characters are card board charactures with an "afternoon delight" thrown in for good measure. Anyone reasonably familiar with the profile of anti-communism in the U.S. and the career of Whitaker Chambers - an undergraduate classmate of Trilling's - will probably be able to figure out what is going on. But for those who cannot, a few chapters of The Conservative Turn, particularly the one specifically on this book, should clarify things.

Those seriously interested in pursuing what the Goodreads summary calls the "lack of integrity" theme might find some of the work of Donald C. Hodge, in particular, a book called Deep Republicanism of interest. It translates the psychologism of that phrase into the context of the evolution of political thought arising from interpretations of Machiavelli by Rousseau, Marx, Lenin, and others.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trilling's beautiful prose makes this a delightful book to read. Atmospheric and dense with subtle details relating to the political crisis of liberal America in the period following revelations about Stalin's Russian, the novel, taking place during a summer vacation in rural Connecticut, is itself a kind of respite from the real world concerns that beset us today. Intellectually suffused with a bygone sense of liberal idealism that has been challenged by a shocking sense of corruption – one of the socialist-bourgeois characters turns renegade and turns from party orthodoxy – the novel evokes a world that is almost impossible to comprehend today. Still, as the plot (such as it is) unfolds like a lazy summer afternoon, the characters themselves come alive in ways that their foolish idealisms cannot.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was prompted to read Trilling's "The Liberal Imagination," and decided instead to start here with what I think is his only novel. It was in some ways for me an experience of reading about relatively recent times but still having the feeling of doing so through a time machine. Aspects of the characters and the situation seemed very removed while others still held the spark of contemporaneity. The portrait of Gifford Maxim is especially interesting, as is the entire scene of the wealthy/intellectual set and their ideals related to liberalism and the Communist party. At times I was disgusted by John Laskell's (protagonist) snobbery; at other times deeply intrigued by his takes on the issues of the day. For me, a worthwhile look at the pre-McCarthy era and what disputes were to come.

[Jude · Rating 4 out of 5]

N.Y.R.B.M.F.T. New York Review strikes again! This is Trilling's only novel and makes you wish he had written more. On the surface, a story of idealistic New Dealers caught up in nebulous Communist plots in 1937, it is much more a subtle rumination on the dark shadow of death and disillusionment in a bright summer idyll. Post-war talks to pre-war. Maxim, based on Whittaker Chambers, is an amazing character, a complex portrait of the radical gone conservative. Made me understand Wm Buckley much better, no joke.

[Nathan Oates · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel by the famous literary critic and scholar, Lionel Trilling, was, in some ways, a wonderful, Jamesian novel of consciousness within the context of the political turmoil on the left in American politics during the 1930s. I loved many parts of the book, but ultimately it felt somewhat bloated. Trilling could have used an editor not afraid to pare away some of the narrative chunks, particularly from the scenes of dramatic action and dialogue.

[Lee]

A mixed bag. There are occasionally powerful novelistic moments -- Laskell's relationship to Emily and Susan Caldwell, most notably -- interrupted by long scenes depicting characters (who are hard to credit as real) having sometimes vague, often tedious political debates that ham-handedly communicate Trilling's views on the corruption of fellow travelling liberals.

[W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quiet New England writing. Excellent.

[Creag · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gives you a feeling for how seriously people took themselves in these times. Pretty over-wrought and leaves me feeling that it all got pretty silly.

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just realized this is the last book I will ever have to read for school.

[Simone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good look at the middle-class intelligentsia's attraction to communism in the 1930s