The Longest Journey
1907
The longest journey is not across continents or through time, but into the impossible distance between who we might become and who we actually are. E.M. Forster called this his most personal novel, and the rawness shows. Rickie Elliot arrives at Cambridge bright with potential: sensitive, imaginative, destined for something. He has talent. He has dreams. But life is patient in its destruction. Practical concerns accumulate. Conventional expectations harden. Fear masquerades as wisdom. By the novel's devastating end, Rickie has traded his birthright for respectability and discovered that the man he became is a stranger to the boy he was. Yet Forster's genius lies in his refusal to simplify. Rickie is neither hero nor villain but something far more recognizable: a person who incrementally betrayed himself and called it growing up. The novel moves between comic precision and quiet tragedy with an ease that feels effortless because it isn't. For anyone who has ever felt the gap between their inner life and their outward existence, this novel burns with uncomfortable recognition.
Editions
X-Ray
“It's not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.””
— E. M. Forster
“The bully and the victim never quite forget their first relations.””
— E. M. Forster
“Don't believe those lies about intellectual people. They're only written to soothe the majority.””
— E. M. Forster
“He had shown her all the workings of his soul, mistaking this for love.””
— E. M. Forster
“Talk away. If you bore us, we have books."With this invitation Rickie began to relate his history. The reader who has no book will be obliged to listen to it.””
— E. M. Forster
“Yet complicated people were getting wet - not only the shepherds. For instance, the piano-tuner was sopping. So was the vicar's wife. So were the lieutenant and the peevish damsels in his Battlesden car. Gallantry, charity, and art pursued their various missions, perspiring and muddy, while out on the slopes beyond them stood the eternal man and the eternal dog, guarding eternal sheep until the world is vegetarian.””
— E. M. Forster
“Boys are marvellous creatures. Perhaps they will sink below the brutes; perhaps they will attain to a woman’s tenderness.””
— E. M. Forster
“Don’t you think there are two greatthings in life that we ought to aim at”
— E. M. Forster
“Oh, poor, poor fellow!' said Mrs. Elliot with a remorse that was sincere, though her congratulations would not have been.””
— E. M. Forster
