Life in Culture, Lionel Trilling
Life in Culture, Lionel Trilling
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Life in Culture
Selected Letters of Lionel Trilling

Author: Lionel Trilling, Adam Kirsch

Narrator: Paul Heitsch

Unabridged: 17 hr 18 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/16/2018


Synopsis

In the mid-twentieth century, Lionel Trilling was America's most respected literary critic. His powerful and subtle essays inspired readers to think about how literature shapes our politics, our culture, and our selves. His 1950 collection, The Liberal Imagination, sold more than 100,000 copies, epitomizing a time that has been called the age of criticism.

To his New York intellectual peers, Trilling could seem reserved and circumspect. But in his selected letters, Trilling is revealed in all his variousness and complexity. We witness his ardent courtship of Diana Trilling, who would become an eminent intellectual in her own right; his alternately affectionate and contentious rapport with former students such as Allen Ginsberg and Norman Podhoretz; the complicated politics of Partisan Review and other fabled magazines of the period; and Trilling's relationships with other leading writers of the period, including Saul Bellow, Edmund Wilson, and Norman Mailer.

In Life in Culture, edited by Adam Kirsch, Trilling's letters add up to an intimate portrait of a great critic, and of America's intellectual journey from the political passions of the 1930s to the cultural conflicts of the 1960s and beyond.

About Lionel Trilling

Lionel Trilling (1905-1975) taught at Columbia University from 1931 until his death and was the author of many books, including Matthew Arnold and the novel The Middle of the Journey.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jonfaith on August 28, 2022

I think we're in one of those bad times when minds lose their tone and make only flaccid noises. Such times have always passed and maybe this one will. Trilling was speaking historically, perhaps echoing Musil amongst others. I mused upon this and thought autobiographically. Perhaps this is a dark ti......more

Goodreads review by Josh on October 21, 2020

A look into Trilling's inner life, edited by Adam Kirsch, as he corresponds with the people you might expect - Diana, Jacques Barzun, Meyer Schapiro, Sidney Hook, Lewis Mumford - frets over a second novel he never finished, argues the big intellectual issues of his day (Freud and psychoanalysis, Sta......more

Goodreads review by David on February 02, 2019

Life in Culture: Selected Letters of Lionel Trilling Thursday, January 17, 2019 11:35 PM Lionel Trilling's letters are marvelously witty, sometimes playful, droll, and light, sometimes with extended reflective intensity, always displaying an impressive intellect. A number of the letters are about rath......more