The Longest Journey (Twentieth Century Classics) [Paperback]

This is, by my reckoning, E.M. Forster's most personal novel. Indeed everything in `Two Cheers for Democracy' and his letters can be seen in embryonic form here. Starting with the aesthetic, a love for a picture of Stockholm which the uninformed would mistake for Venice [13] (a preference which, to express an interest, I share personally). It also delves deeply in to human consciousness, class, sensitivity, trust and acceptance. The three parts, Cambridge, Sawston (back again), and Wiltshire are perfectly sectioned off and do enough to create the feeling of montage and bildungsroman for Rickie.

The jokes about respectability start quickly and come fast and furious, for example "aunt Emily never pushes anybody lest they rebound and crush her" [20], social protocol is treated with an utmost vehemence at the height of Forster's preaching and casual indifference at other times. English "respectability" is slammed again through the rationalist separation of love in two categories, desire and imagination. Desire is seen as inferior by the English [66]. Agnes is the stereotype of the person who imagines themselves to be unconventional whereas Stephen is really the unconventional one and the personality that most attracts Rickie.

As with all Forster novels the landscape flows in to the story and during some of the descriptions the characters are flung in to a separate dimension and we find that our feet stand in the dell, on the plains of Wiltshire or in the suffocating tightness of Sawston. The two landscapes that are the most important to understanding the human condition and the environment are the dell and the Chilterns. Take this extract describing the dell:

"You see, a year or two ago I had a great idea of getting in touch with nature, just as the Greeks were in touch; and seeing England so beautiful, I used to pretend that her Trees and coppices and summer fields of parsley were alive. It's funny enough now, but it wasn't funny then, for I got in such a state that I believed, actually believed, that Fauns lived in a certain double hedgerow near the Gog Magogs, and one evening I walked round a mile sooner than go through it alone" [Rickie to Agnes, p77]

Here Forster brings Arcadia to England; the dell maintains two feelings throughout the novel. The first: a Narnia-esque quality of a vast land of beauty and of hidden liberty that only a few enter through a secret clearing. In this quality it is a place where minds can blossom and new philosophies can be born and taken back to Cambridge. The second: it is an area that, because of its solitude, is conducive to falling in love. It acts as a hidden cove where lovers can meet and hide from the world their passion encircling them as the wilderness encircles the safety of the dell. Therefore the Dell plays a vital role in the development of the early plot of the novel, the environment interacts with the characters emotions.

The south of England is also of high importance; parts of Wiltshire are depicted as flat and barren - the dryness of the events that occur here perfectly links with that. However, moving east Forster tells us that "here is the heart of our island; the Chilterns, the North Downs, the South Downs radiate hence" [132] and it is through that landscape that we are introduced to Stephen's journey.

The eventual relationship between Rickie and Stephen is one that exalts the virtues of forgiveness and friendship; however the friendship is not equal as there is still a slight magnetism on Rickie's behalf towards respectability.
It is hard (but not as hard as writing a review without giving anything away), not to slip in to nihilism whilst reading this story but with Forster's narration and interpretation one can see that grand ambition need not be the purpose of life.

This novel preaches Forster's message of humanism and tolerance more than any other whilst being a good read, there is some mystery left in the ending and one is so used to scandal throughout E.M Forster's oeuvre that speculation will occupy your mind for days after.

Edward Morgan Forster expressed his special partiality for this particular book regretting that it was never as popular as "The Room with a View". It seems, however, that his readers knew better choosing either the lighter Italian novels or later works such as "Howards End" or "A Passage to India".
Forster's partiality is comprehensible when we try to read the book through his biography. On the one hand he is able to reveal here his long-term infatuation with a fellow student and go back to his university adventures. On the other hand he uses his craft to draw for himself a life he would have had he decided to become straight. The image is far from pleasant - becoming straight means being imprisoned in a hapless marriage for which the hero has to pay with his academic career. It is an unhappy life which ends in an accidental death.
This is an important novel in Forster's oeuvre and if you were attracted by others you should by all means proceed to "The Longest Journey". Still, a modern reader will gasp many a time while reading the novel. It wouldn't be fair to reveal too much but just let me draw your attention to one fact. Forster apparently finds dealing with his cast of characters a bit too much so they disappear one by one... as a result of sudden deaths. When Gerald is "broken" on a football pitch you gasp, but when you have drowning, heart attack, deathly cold and train accident and so on you can't help smiling.

I think this suffers from the same problem as Bed. The main character has so little going for him that the novel just runs out of steam. Not a patch on "Room with a View" and his other main novels. The philosophical bits at the beginnig are quite interesting, but Bryan Magee covers the same ground without you having to bother with a tedious novel.