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The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays, by Lionel Trilling
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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.
This collection features 32 of Trilling’s essays on a range of topics, from Jane Austen to George Orwell and from the Kinsey Report to Lolita. Also included are Trilling’s seminal essays “Art and Neurosis” and “Manners, Morals, and the Novel.” Many of the pieces made their initial appearances in periodicals such as The Partisan Review and Commentary; most were later reprinted in essay collections. This new gathering of his writings demonstrates again Trilling’s patient, thorough style. Considering “the problems of life”—in art, literature, culture, and intellectual life—was, to him, a vital occupation, even if he did not expect to get anything as simple or encouraging as “answers.” The intellectual journey was the true goal.
No matter the subject, Trilling’s arguments come together easily, as if constructing complicated defenses and attacks were singularly simple for his well-honed mind. The more he wrote on a subject and the more intricate his reasoning, the more clear that subject became; his elaboration is all function and no filler. Wrestling with Trilling’s challenging work still yields rewards today, his ideas speaking to issues that transcend decades and even centuries.
- Sales Rank: #717326 in Books
- Brand: Trilling, Lionel/ Wieseltier, Leon (EDT)
- Published on: 2009-08-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x 1.50" w x 5.50" l, 1.45 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 592 pages
From Library Journal
Trilling (1905-74) epitomized the idea of the 1950s New York intellectual. In opposition to the prevailing theories of the New Critics, he adopted a broader approach: the study of the interconnections between literature and culture. This collection features 32 of his essays on a range of topics, from Jane Austen to George Orwell, from the Kinsey Report to Lolita. Also included are Trilling's seminal essays "Art and Neurosis" and "Manners, Morals, and the Novel." Initially appearing in periodicals like the Partisan Review and Commentary, most of these pieces were later reprinted in Trilling's essay collections, which included The Liberal Imagination, Beyond Culture, and the posthumously published Speaking of Literature and Society. Recommended for public and academic libraries, especially those lacking the earlier collections.
-William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Trilling (1905^-74) was an enormously influential critic who vehemently eschewed simplistic or emotional responses to art or morality. The author of many works, he was especially exigent, to use one of his favorite words, in his essays, most of which have long been out of print. Republished now in this substantial volume edited and vividly introduced by Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor for the New Republic and author of Kaddish (1998), these essays and lectures, still fresh and provocative, cover topics ranging from Austen, James, and Frost to the connections between art, neurosis, and politics. Distrustful of rapture and keen on reading literature as, in Wieseltier's words, "documents for a moral history of culture," Trilling embraced complexity and nuance and held critical integrity in the highest esteem. His essays possess great intellectual weight, and their richness, deep seriousness of thought, and sonorous vocabulary and syntax are balanced by a lashing wit and remarkable energy. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"Trilling constantly pits 'spontaneity, complexity, and variety' against the propensity to commiserate with, then condescend to, then coerce our peers."--Kirkus Reviews
"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
"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
Most helpful customer reviews
176 of 195 people found the following review helpful.
Relevant moral issues....
By Dianne Foster
On Sunday 7/30/00, The New York Times carried a review of "The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent" -- an article by Edward Rothstein entitled, "Dated? Perhaps, But His Insights Remain Powerful" -- Rothstein's insights are useful and I agree with most of them, but I found more than Rothstein had space or inclination to address.
Trilling's essays cover the core moral issues 19th and early 20th century writers addressed--fascism, communism, pornography, evil, the nature of beauty, the existence and nature of God. While the book focuses on the thoughts and writing of mostly dead white males (and Jane Austen), the struggle continues, and we all have a moral responsibility to be actively informed.
I bought this book because it contained two essays on Jane Austen of whom I am excessively fond. One of these essays, "Mansfield Park", addresses her most controversial book. Trilling wrote "Mansfield Park" because he believed the book has had been mischaracterized by those who disliked Fanny Price.
Trilling discusses a major moral issue in this essay--one many "sophisticated" people deliberately ignore--irony can be evil. He says that "In irony, even in the large derived sense of the word, there is a kind of malice." He suggests there may have been malice on the part of Austen when she engaged in irony. But, he suggests, there are two kinds of irony--the detached kind and the engaged kind. It is the former that is evil because it takes place at the expense of others, i.e. is not charitable. The other kind of irony is involved, the user is attempting to meliorate a painful situation within which she or he finds himself. An example of the latter is the narrator's comment in "Pride and Prejudice" -- "it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single young man in possesion of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." An example of the cruel kind of irony occurs in "Mansfield Park" via Mary Crawford's comments meant in jest.
Trilling suggests the greatness of "Mansfield Park" is "commensuate with it's power to offend." He says whereas "Pride and Prejudice" celebrates the "traits of spiritedness, vivacity, celerity, and lightness" and "associates them with happiness and virtue" Mansfield Park does the opposite. "Mansfield's Park"'s impulse is not to forgive, but to condemn. Its praise is not for social freedom, but social constraint. The condemnation is of the wrong kind of irony, the hurtful kind of irony, the irony of the uncharitable toward Fanny Price. "The virtue of Fanny Price is rewarded by more than itself." It is beyond the pleasure principle. Remember duty, honor, sacrifice? In the end, Trilling suggests Fanny Price is a kind of Christian saint like the pale Milly Theale in James' "Wings of the Dove."
Does it matter? Are those who seek goodness fools? He raises this issue and shares what he believes to be Jane Austen's thoughts on the topic, which he latter expands in "The Fate of Pleasure." Is there something beyond mere pleasure?
Keats thought so. He said "Truth is Beauty." But what about evil. Is evil real? Keats says yes, but so is beauty. The reality of evil does not cancel the reality of beauty. The world is a terrible place where evil and beauty lie side by side. Trilling's essay on Keats was so wonderful, it made me cry.
I marked dozens of passages in my book that I wanted to share, but there is not enough space. The sections of the essays that I enjoyed most, other than those on Austen (the second essay was not completed when Trilling died), coverend the writing of Henry James. I had never seen him as the natural heir to Austen. Now I shall go back and reread James. Also, I was pleased to see Trilling trash Theodore Dreiser. I hated his writing and so apparently did Trilling. A more modern critic would have done a better job of covering George Elliot--Mary Ann Evans--certainly "Adam Bede" is a book about morality, but Trilling did not pay much attention to women or ethnic writers--why I have to give it 4 stars. Too bad, they could have added to this discourse, but don't let that prevent your reading this fine book.
43 of 50 people found the following review helpful.
Philosophy for the reader of "ordinary strong intelligence"
By A Customer
I'm an English major, and last year, in my third year of university (I'm 27, however), I purchased this book, struck by
the title. I'd read a couple of Trilling's essays several years
earlier and liked them, but I was put off by his tendency to relate literature to moral and political issues. "Boring," I
thought, having had my ideas of art formed in high school by Oscar Wilde and, later, Camille Paglia. But I've become more
open-minded since then, and when I started reading this book I
couldn't put it down--I read 80% of it in one weekend of doing
nothing else and the rest of it by the end of the month.
Trilling is a fantastic essay-writer who knows how to draw the
reader in with his rhetoric and draw everything towards a
resounding, moving climax. Most of the essays in this collection
are less works of criticism than erudite ruminations to which
Trilling has been moved by specific works of literature or by
considering literature as a whole. He comes up with simply
fascinating, extremely suggestive ideas; for example, in "The
Fate of Pleasure," one of my favourite essays in the volume, he
suggests that pleasure has fallen out of favour in the modern era. Like many of his other intriguing ideas, it is the sort of
thing that rings generally true without really being susceptible
to proof; nor is Trilling that great at arguing his positions or
even defining his terms. However, he offers lucid and passionate
discussions of ideas, drawn from his study of literature, that
are generally only found in dry or head-breakingly difficult
philosophical works. These are essays for the dabbler in philosophy, but that's not to belittle them: in one of the essays
Trilling complains that in the modern era (naturally) philosophy
has become a subject for specialists rather than for the person of "ordinary strong intelligence" (I'm quoting from memory, but that's the idea). Even if he's not always successful in focussing his argument or proving his thesis, he'll start your
mind going on broad, fascinating topics (pleasure, the abyss,
the will, "being," "mind"), and you can pursue the ideas in greater detail on your own, at your leisure. Also, like Camille
Paglia and Harold Bloom, Trilling loves to play the devil's advocate, and he therefore loves to criticize liberalism although he was himself a passionate liberal. This will probably
give him an unfortunate appeal for conservatives, but the people
who will get most out of the book are liberals who enjoy having
their assumptions questioned. That constant questioning of his
own assumptions, when they are shared by the reader, is one of
the things that makes Trilling such an electrifying writer.
43 of 51 people found the following review helpful.
First rate literary and cultural criticism
By Douglas Doak
Okay, so it isn't precisely beach reading, but this collection of literary and cultural pieces by one of the most influential critics and essayists of the 20th century belongs on the bookshelf of every literate person. The essays on Wordsworth, Twain and Austen's "Mansfield Park" are minor masterpieces. Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic, contributes a fine introduction.
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