At the novel’s end, Laskell finds himself with a great vacancy in his thought. In Stalinist liberalism, he now sees “an absolute freedom from responsibility” that he no longer wants; but Maxim’s insistence on the doctrine that “we are all part of one another” is also unpalatable: “An absolute responsibility – that much of a divine or metaphysical essence none of us is.” When Trilling rep rinted the novel in 1975, he stated that its “polemical end” had been to show how Stalinist Communism had negated political life among intellectuals. Looking back from 2008, one may usefully view the book’s themes as a foreshadowing of what today is called neoconservatism, especially in its recognition that “liberalism is always being surprised”, of the difficulty that many liberals have in recognising and confronting evil, and their vulnerability to the ideological bullying of authoritarian leaders.

Trilling’s letters of 1947-48 expressed the hope of establishing himself as a novelist rather than a critic. As The Middle of the Journey was going to press, he told a colleague, Richard Chase, that he was at work on another novel, which he expected to “be better … richer, less shaped, less intellectualized, more open"..

The new book (of which we have 24 chapters, or about 150 pages) left the realm of politics for that of the literary life in the late 1930s, and placed Vincent Hammell, an ambitious young teacher and would-be biographer, at its centre. In a document that Murphy calls Trilling’s preface, he defines the hero’s literary pedigree. “His ambitions are intellectual and, at 24, he has won some intellectual distinction in his own city … Think of him as practical, energetic, not a dreamer or a moon-calf. He has real talent and he does not have the mechanical ‘shyness’ of a sensitive young hero … He has what in a young man passes for maturity. He is decent, generous; but he is achingly ambitious … He wishes to be genuine, a man of integrity; yet he also wishes to be successful. His problem is to advance his fortunes and still be an honest man. He is conscious of all the dangers; he is literate and knows the fates of Julien Sorel, of Rastignac, of Frederic Moreau – all the defeated and disintegrated young men of the great 19th century cycle of failure. He … is determined not to make their mistakes.