Why Trilling Matters

Why X Matters Series

by Adam Kirsch

Lionel Trilling, regarded at the time of his death in 1975 as America’s preeminent literary critic, is today often seen as a relic of a vanished era. His was an age when literary criticism and ideas seemed to matter profoundly in the intellectual life of the country. In this eloquent book, Adam Kirsch shows that Trilling, far from being obsolete, is essential to understanding our current crisis of literary confidence—and to overcoming it. By reading Trilling primarily as a writer and thinker, Kirsch demonstrates how Trilling’s original and moving work continues to provide an inspiring example of a mind creating itself through its encounters with texts. Why Trilling Matters introduces all of Trilling’s major writings and situates him in the intellectual landscape of his century, from Communism in the 1930s to neoconservatism in the 1970s. But Kirsch goes deeper, addressing today’s concerns about the decline of literature, reading, and even the book itself, and finds that Trilling has more to teach us now than ever before. As Kirsch writes, “Trilling’s essays are not exactly literary criticism” but, like all literature, “ends in themselves.”

Genres: Literary Criticism, Journalism

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Adam Kirsch is the author of two collections of poems and several books of poetry criticism. A senior editor at the New Republic and a columnist for Tablet, he also writes for The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. He lives in New York City with his wife and son.

Reviews

[J. Alfred · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good little book; it probably won't convince you that Trilling Matters unless you don't particularly need convincing, but if you like or are interested in Trilling, this will further your liking and give you more to be interested in. This helps give an overview of his thought, points out some of his interactions with the time, and shows some varied features of the work as a whole that are worthy of extended comment. The section on Trilling's relationship with Ginsberg-- Trilling was his teacher at Columbia-- is especially interesting.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Adam Kirsch is an excellent writer and has written captivating and lively essays about poets.

In this book about the literary critic, editor, and professor Lionel Trilling, there is much of interest to be found -- BUT, I think the reader needs to have an interest in literary thought and criticism to begin with in order to make this worthwhile. If you're coming at it with little familiarity with Trilling, it would not be of interest to you.

Along with people like Dana Gioia, I think Kirsch is trying to say why literature matters and is using Trilling's life and career as the stepping-stone to that end. This is all good. If that particular subject interests you, then you might find this book worth a try.

By the way, some of Trilling's best essays are not only in his books, but his editorial work. Try the Experience of Literature, which won't be easy to find, but the brief analyses found throughout that book, with focus on particular writers, dramatists, and poets are polished, superb, and wonderful.

[D.P. Hanson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good overview, but no substitute

Yes, Trilling should matter to anyone serious about literature. Now I think I will spend no more time reading about Trilling but go back to reading the man himself.

In discussing Trilling in conjunction with Sontag, Kirsch implies that when you consume something you get rid of it. This seems wrong to me. One does not consume art, one experiences it.

[Barbara Heisey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adam Kirsch has written a lovely tribute to the fairly heady Trilling, giving the reader a fairly good idea of what motivated Trilling's criticism and what meant for the life of the mind, a life Trilling lived to the fullest.

Trilling's engagement with the Great Questions of human existence and his faith in literature's vivifying and explanatory capacity is a solvent for this age of vacant post-modernist cant.

[foundfoundfound · Rating 3 out of 5]

kirsch makes a good show of rallying around his suject but, trilling, like literature itself, is dead; a victim of self-slaughter by the university humanities departments. it's over, i'm afraid.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nicely written and a good introduction to Trilling. (If I were not so busy now finally updating my page here, I might have more to say . . .)

[m · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book. Only 40,000 words, but taxing.

I'm going to reread this, but only after I reread some Trilling essays & Diderot's Rameau's Nephew.