{"product_id":"the-journey-abandoned-9780231144506","title":"The Journey Abandoned","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1947, Lionel Trilling, the prominent literary critic, published a novel entitled \u003ci\u003eThe Middle of the Journey\u003c\/i\u003e. While conducting research in the archives at Columbia University, Geraldine Murphy discovered a second novel-a clean, well-crafted \"third\" of a book that Trilling described as having \"point, immediacy, warmth under control, drama, and even size.\" \u003ci\u003eThe Journey Abandoned\u003c\/i\u003e was supposed to be a novel about the anomalies of heroic action in a conformist age. Instead, published here for the first time, it is a highly personal portrait of the life of letters in America. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJorris Buxton, the narrative's larger-than-life focus, is an elderly poet and novelist turned distinguished mathematical physicist. Modeled on the romantic poet Walter Savage Landor, Buxton is destined to embroil himself in a principled but somewhat absurd conflict, just as the aged Landor had, and through his folly complicate the lives of his admirers. These memorable characters include Garda Thorne, a beautiful short-story writer (and Buxton's former mistress); Harold Outram, the director of an influential private foundation and a compromised man of letters; Philip Dyas, the headmaster of a private school; the Hollowells, a wealthy, progressive couple; Marion Cathcart, a young woman of Outram's household; and Vincent Hammell, an untried literary man from the Midwest and Buxton's newly appointed biographer. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHammell is the central consciousness of the novel. A young man from the provinces, he is drawn from Trilling's own experience yet also indebted to the nineteenth-century \u003ci\u003ebildungsroman\u003c\/i\u003e, the literary form Trilling admired as a critic and emulated, in these pages, as a novelist. In her introduction, Murphy considers how \u003ci\u003eThe Journey Abandoned\u003c\/i\u003e (which is her title) relates to the critical ideas Trilling articulated in his famous essay collection, \u003ci\u003eThe Liberal Imagination\u003c\/i\u003e. She speculates that Henry James came to displace Landor as the model for Jorris Buxton, a development that may have both inspired and inhibited the writing of this novel.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Lionel Trilling","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48276913455355,"sku":"9780231144506","price":100.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0779\/3917\/9771\/files\/9780231144506.jpg?v=1772481109","url":"https:\/\/indiepubs.com\/products\/the-journey-abandoned-9780231144506","provider":"IndiePubs","version":"1.0","type":"link"}