Bringing together the thoughts of one of American literature's sharpest cultural critics, this compendium will open the eyes of a whole new audience to the work of Lionel Trilling. Trilling was a strenuous thinker who was proud to think "too much." As an intellectual he did not spare his own kind, and though he did not consider himself a rationalist, he was grounded in the world.
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Summary
Bringing together the thoughts of one of American literature's sharpest cultural critics, this compendium will open the eyes of a whole new audience to the work of Lionel Trilling. Trilling was a strenuous thinker who was proud to think "too much." As an intellectual he did not spare his own kind, and though he did not consider himself a rationalist, he was grounded in the world.
Description
A landmark reissue of a great teacher's finest work.
Lionel Trilling was, during his lifetime, generally acknowledged to be one of the finest essayists in the English language, the heir of Hazlitt and the peer of Orwell. Since his death in 1974, his work has been discussed and hotly debated, yet today, when writers and critics claim to be "for" or "against" his interpretations, they can hardly be well acquainted with them, for his work has been largely out of print for years.
With this re-publication of Trilling's finest essays, Leon Wieseltier offers readers of many new generations a rich overview of Trilling's achievement. The essays collected here include justly celebrated masterpieces--on Mansfield Park and on "Why We Read Jane Austen"; on Twain, Dos Passos, Hemingway, Isaac Babel; on Keats, Wordsworth, Eliot, Frost; on "Art and Neurosis"; and the famous Preface to Trilling's book The Liberal Imagination.
This exhilarating work has much to teach readers who may have been encouraged to adopt simpler systems of meaning, or were taught to exchange the ideals of reason and individuality for those of enthusiasm and the false romance of group identity. Trilling's remarkable essays show a critic who was philosophically motivated and textually responsible, alive to history but not in thrall to it, exercised by art but not worshipful of it, consecrated to ideas but suspicious of theory.
Critic Reviews
“"Wieseltier . . . has chosen wisely . . . One can recommend this book as either an introduction to or a reminder of one of the few intelligent men of our time toward whose work . . . an intellectual obligation still exists." --Richard Gilman,”
"There was never just one thing, in [Trilling's] work. He was mentally indefatigable; there was order in his writing, but there was no repose."--Leon Wieseltier
"Trilling constantly pits 'spontaneity, complexity, and variety' against the propensity to commiserate with, then condescend to, then coerce our peers."--Kirkus Reviews
"Wieseltier . . . has chosen wisely . . . One can recommend this book as either an introduction to or a reminder of one of the few intelligent men of our time toward whose work . . . an intellectual obligation still exists."
--Richard Gilman, New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Lionel Trilling (1905-75) is the author of the collections Beyond Culture, The Liberal Imagination, and the posthumously published Speaking of Literature and Society. He was a professor at Columbia University.
Leon Wieseltier is the editor of The New Republic and lives in New York City.
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