The Journey Abandoned_The Unfinished Novel

by Lionel Trilling

  immediate reference to economic crises. There was a period then—no

  doubt it varied for individuals—in which this was possible.

  The story follows the adventures of a young man, name of Vincent

  Hammell. He is a very young man, not more than 23 when the story

  opens. He is not “poor”—but he is the only son of a declining middle

  class family, his father an optometrist, once prosperous, now no longer

  so. He is a cherished child—I call him the child of hope and despair and

  it is that, perhaps, which gave him the sense of destiny, which is what

  chiefly marks him for us.

  Young Vincent’s social plight is not a bad one. From a base a good

  deal less secure than his, many young men have easily gone on to the

  study of one of the established professions and have done very well. But

  Vincent’s choice has been that of the intellect. [Something should be said

  to this effect as the story now stands—that is, the profession of the arts

  should be treated in an even more matter-of-factual way. One advantage

  of this is to make the ordinary reader more at home, less likely to think

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  that he is engaged with a book that has a merely private—professional—

  reference: he should be made to see that Vincent could just as well have

  chosen the profession of law, medicine, engineering. It might not be a

  bad idea here to say what is true of myself that Vincent could not imagine

  these professions for himself, but that at a later time he would easily see

  their attractions and his own ability to handle them. There really cannot

  be too much objective comment on Vincent’s profession.]1 It is a choice

  that makes difficulties. For Vincent lives in a large mid-western Ameri-

  can city: at present it is not named, but perhaps it should be named and

  it should be Cleveland, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Detroit, Minneapolis, some

  city which has its “culture” but not the kind of active intellectual life that

  would satisfy a young man of Vincent’s sort.

  Vincent’s character does not need explanation here. It will, as living

  character, develop either without specific intention or not all. What is to

  be understood now is simply that the young man is attractive as a per-

  son, yet not too much so—people can be impatient with him, but on the

  whole they like him and can be devoted to him. He has a curious little

  internal force to which they respond; his manner and appearance are of

  a kind to make this little tough power appear.

  As the story opens, we learn this about young Vincent: that he is

  deeply involved in the idea of moral “integrity” and that he is at the same

  time wonderfully drawn to personal achievement and success.

  [The present treatment of the idea of integrity is too tight. It needs

  to be opened out more—treated more objectively (as with the profession

  of writing above) and communicated more to the reader. Perhaps names

  are needed; and that incredible Michel Mok “interview” with the drunk-

  en destroyed Scott Fitzgerald might very well serve for a center.]

  This central moral fact of Vincent’s life we learn about immediately

  in action. The story opens on a tennis-court, at the socially sound Tennis

  Club. Vincent is playing with his old friend, Toss Dodge. They have long

  been friends, but now they are growing apart, not merely because Toss

  is rich but because Vincent has become an intellectual. Vincent has just

  received a letter from Harold Outram, replying to one of his own about

  Outram’s books. He makes a bet with himself—but the story gives it well

  enough and it does not need to be repeated . . .

  Toss, with a kind of blind accuracy, sees the ambiguity of motive in

  Vincent’s writing to Outram, the man who has lost his “integrity.” This

  1 These brackets are Trilling’s, as are all others in this commentary that enclose more than

  one word.

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  perception is repeated in the scenes with Vincent’s mother and with

  Theodore Kramer, Vincent’s former teacher: until Vincent himself must

  understand why he had written Outram.

  The scene of the end of the friendship with Toss: “My youth is over.”

  The scene with Vincent’s mother … to build up the economic and

  family background. Essentially as now. But more developed.

  And in this development, more of the life that Vincent has been

  living.… His book more dealt with … why does he not run off to New

  York as so many young men do? … his neurotic feelings and inability

  to write.

  [I think this is true of things as the job now stands: that there is not enough

  spread—there is too much economy. It is remarkable how much exposition

  a novel can stand, and of the crudest sort: all the reader really needs is a

  promise of story to come. The story so far is perhaps too “elegantly” told.

  The novel must always have the sense of chronicle—at least I like it when

  it has.]

  His father’s “place”…

  The interview with Theodore Kramer … dramatically sets the situa-

  tion of Outram and the nature of Outram’s defeat.2

  [Not enough is made in this scene of Outram’s breakdown—Kramer should

  be more aware of it.]

  This scene further establishes Vincent’s moral situation, but it should

  show him as really a very nice person; his attitude to his old teacher

  should be in large part endearing, but not too much so. On the whole, I

  think this scene is reasonably well handled as is.

  The scene with Outram, much as it is now: but, again, expansion is

  needed: they should not sit, as now, in one place—the bar or grill—but

  should go at least for a walk—the business of Outram giving Vincent a

  gift, as in an earlier draft, is good and useful and should be restored.

  Very possibly the present unity of scene is wrong—makes too much

  happen in a short time—possibly a day should intervene between the

  first meeting and the dramatic climax of the offer, a day in which Vin-

  cent’s hopes and anticipations are raised very high: this would give us

  2 The ellipses are Trilling’s. In the original they are of varying lengths, but I have used the con-

  ventional three periods.

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  the opportunity of saying a great deal more about his situation—right in

  the midst of an action—which I more and more think needs saying.

  In any case the story makes its first step forward by Outram’s offer to

  Vincent of the job of writing the biography of that remarkable man, Jor-

  ris Buxton. Same business, I am sure, of Buxton as a young writer who

  had little success, became at 40 a scientist, is now 80. But this should be

  built up from the present draft, there should be more told, or it should be

  told twice, or discussed—as it is now it is too pat and summary.

  And so Vincent has his chance and, I think, dramatically enough. He

  is to be taken—lifted—out of his present depressed and depressing situa-

  tion and put into a situation of brilliance, which—and I think we can begin

  to gather this—holds the promise of a moral situation of some weight.


  Now we get the scene at Meadowfield, the class in creative writing,

  which should be kept. [But Meadowfield must be built up in a different

  way, through the various scenes, not told about. It should still be the

  reason for Harold Outram’s visit to the city, however. But H. O. should

  not be shown directly there.] The scene of the class signalizes, as it were,

  Vincent’s departure and freedom.

  Then we have the day of departure—Vincent’s scene with his moth-

  er: but this should be made more affecting: it is now MUCH too mini-

  mal and restrained; it should a little match the scene with the father; but

  since there ought to be an actual scene of departure at the station, the

  affectingness might well be kept for there; and on the whole I think it

  should be. Then there should be added the scene of Vincent in the Pull-

  man—that scene of the young man on his first travel of adventure which

  is so much an American theme.

  [Whether to have a passage on what is bound to be important to a

  young man, his arrival in New York, must be considered. I am not at-

  tracted by it as a matter of any length; yet it would perhaps seem odd in

  a realistic novel that it is not mentioned. It could of course be mentioned

  in retrospect, upon Vincent’s arrival at Outram’s house in the country.]

  The arrival at the Outram house: The present scene is very ade-

  quate—the young man’s confused and mistaken impressions—his first

  meeting with Mrs. Outram. His first meeting with Garda Thorne, of

  whom we have had as it were a spiritual glimpse in the scene of the class

  in creative writing.

  Up to now, although reasonably dramatic, the story has been going

  along the ground. So long a stretch of taxi-ing must argue a long novel.

  We have to face up to this: the pace of what has occupied us until now

  can be the introduction only to a long story. We must give up all craven

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  hope of making it short. If it is to be short, it must begin with Vincent’s

  arrival at Outram’s. But that isn’t what you want. So best make up your

  mind to length.

  Here the story begins to leave the ground for flight.

  The plot actually thickens. Garda Thorne has an interview with Vin-

  cent in which, it is apparent, she is for some reason trying to take him

  into camp. She has a deep interest in the way Buxton’s biography is to

  be written and she immediately reveals her reason for it: she has been

  Buxton’s mistress and naturally would be concerned with how the cru-

  cial matter of their relationship would be treated. But as she talks, she

  cannot hide what is the specific worry for her—the somehow scandalous

  fact that she was only seventeen and Buxton quite fifty-five when the af-

  fair began. But she breaks off the interview with a cry of fear and horror

  as the fact is terribly borne in upon her that seventeen is now more than

  twenty-five years behind her. Vincent’s feelings are by this and by other

  things about Garda, deeply and truly stirred.

  The story, as it is now, goes forward the next day when we learn of

  the existence of a certain Claudine Post who has apparently some kind of

  control over Buxton. It is she who has prevented Buxton from coming to

  the Outrams’ for dinner the evening before. It is clear that Garda deeply

  resents Mrs. Post and that so do the two Outrams. But when Vincent,

  naturally interested in a person so close to Buxton, asks about Claudine

  Post he is told by Outram that he had better find out for himself.

  This reply—not in itself very significant, except for what it might

  say about Outram and about the curious tenseness of the social situa-

  tion around Buxton—gives Vincent cause for offense. He is suddenly

  struck with the fact that he is being a little manipulated by Outram and

  he begins to wonder, angrily, why he, so very young, has been chosen to

  write the biography of so notable a man—a work that a much more es-

  tablished man would be glad to undertake.

  [This, looked at now, suggests that the early scenes must deal with the job

  more objectively and in greater detail, so as to make the unlikelihood of the

  choice of Vincent the greater and also the more acceptable. As it now stands,

  it is all too summary. This would have the effect, in addition, of making

  richer and more dramatic the relationship between Outram and Vincent

  which at the moment is too thin.]

  But Vincent’s anger subsides in the charming life he is introduced

  to, most particularly the charm of Garda Thorne herself. In a scene at

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  the swimming pool, a scene which has certain reminiscences of the

  Garda Thorne story which Vincent had read to his class, there is a kind

  of unconscious or rather unrealized sexual passage between them. It is

  immediately upon this—it is early evening—that Buxton arrives with

  Brooks Barrett, coming to the little dinner party that is being given by

  the Outrams.

  We then have the scene between Brooks Barrett and Vincent and

  then the strange perception that Vincent has of the power of mind—that

  curious Aristotlean business. He has what may be the illusion of peace:

  but illusion or not it is a perception and it endows Buxton with a great

  meaning for him.

  [The little relation between Garda and Buxton is pretty good. Also

  the little passage between Vincent and Brooks Barrett. Perhaps in the

  business between Buxton and Vincent something more could be done,

  though substantially it is sound.]

  Then comes the dinner party. We now have the introduction of sev-

  eral characters—Philip Dyas, Julian and Linda Hollowell. Consider them

  presently.

  The dinner party serves two purposes—it gives us the information

  about the Philip Dyas school and Linda’s desire to have it; and it gives

  an example of the effect of Buxton on the people around him. Essen-

  tially the scene is adequate yet very likely it could be strengthened, not

  so much in dramatic point as in interest—in charm. The chapter should

  glitter rather more.

  Then the meeting with Marry. Then the great storm with its disclo-

  sure of Buxton’s mortal weakness and Vincent’s handling of this situa-

  tion. The point of that “handling” is that it brings Vincent to what is for

  the purposes of this novel maturity. We have now a grown man on our

  hands, yet still with all the weakness of a very young one. It is only that

  he has the possibility of being greatly involved—in life. He is not yet free

  from temptation and the possibility of destruction. But he has an edge

  now on all the other characters.

  Here we have stopped [the set-piece description of the town is all

  right, but it is so set and fixed that nothing much can be thought about it

  except whether or not it fits usefully].

  What has been done up to this point is a not inconsiderable achieve-

  ment. I think we can say this: that it has point, immediacy, warmth under

  control, drama and even size. It seems to me a very decent third of the

  book. What is now needed is two other par
ts of equal length and similar

  but mounting intensity.

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  The question is how to handle—even how to produce the two parts.

  The bare bones of the story are there—and are sound bones.

  But the intermediate part of the story does not present itself. Except

  in certain small flashes, most of which seem right.

  The first part, after many approximations and failures, did grow into

  something. And it grew with a kind of unconsciousness. This uncon-

  sciousness was very beguiling and reassuring. One scene suggested an-

  other. Sometimes a few words in one scene suggested another. I think I

  am right in feeling that this way of creating incident is a right way. And I

  am experiencing discouragement because this kind of unconscious move-

  ment of the mind isn’t now going on. But what I forget—as one always

  forgets certain parts of the writing process after the job is finished—is

  that for the first part I had in mind a very clear scenario; it was on this

  that the creation grew: it was the stick for the vine. True, the incidents I

  have finally used were not part of the scenario, but I knew this much very

  clearly: what kind of person Vincent was and what his situation was, same

  of Outram; and I knew the relation of Outram to Buxton; and I knew that

  Vincent was to be picked up by Outram and taken to the East.

  The job for me was then simply to get from point A to point T in as

  interesting a way as possible, creating interesting points in between. I

  did get to point T as desired and on the whole the other points are inter-

  esting.

  What is making the difficulty is that I have not yet got a new point

  at which to aim. That once got, I think I can depend on the unconscious

  process working out a series of connecting and interesting incidents.

  The problem now is to get the second point. The third when we come

  to it; in general we know what it is.

  But the first thing to discover is whether we are properly equipped

  with characters.

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  appendix

  “The Lesson and the Secret”

  The following collation is included for the convenience of readers inter-

  ested in comparing the manuscript of the novel with the story Trilling

  published from it. In “The Lesson and the Secret,”1 Trilling sharpened