Why Trilling Matters
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Adam Kirsch
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The distinguished poet and critic argues for the abiding relevance of a great literary mind of the twentieth century
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.”
Adam Kirsch is a senior editor at the New Republic and a columnist for Tablet magazine. He is the author of several books of poetry and criticism, and most recently of a short biography of Benjamin Disraeli. He lives in New York City.
"Adam Kirsch has given us an inspiring invitation to the life of alert freedom that Lionel Trilling showed literature enables, a life of questioning the self in order to become one."—Mark Lilla, Columbia University
"This finely reflective reconsideration of Trilling argues persuasively for his enduring relevance, not as an interpreter of literature but as a critic forging a self through the restless engagement with literature."—Robert Alter, author of Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible
“One of the central insights of Adam Kirsch’s thoughtful and unusual little book is that Trilling was more concerned than most critics have been with what certain sorts of literature do for their readers.”—Stefani Collini, New Statesman
“Adam Kirsch’s clear-headed book about the esteemed American critic Lionel Trilling comes at a propitious time. . . . the volume suggests Trilling’s writing could be of use in refurbishing criticism today and in the future.”—Bill Marx, Arts Fuse
“In setting out to demonstrate that Trilling still matters, Kirsch is asserting the value of literature and a literary culture. If Trilling thought and wrote, frequently, about the relation of literature to society, it was because, like Matthew Arnold on whom he “modelled himself in certain ways”, he saw in literature the necessary and most penetrating criticism of society, of “the way we live now”.”—Alan Massie, Times Literary Supplement
“Adam Kirsch, a poet, literary critic and senior editor at The New Republic, thinks that we have lost something valuable with the passing of Trilling and his generation, and has written a compact, engrossing book to make his case.”—Ian Marcus Corbin, Wall Street Journal (Europe)
“… [A] timely, incisive, succinct study.”—Paul Binding, The Spectator
“Heartening . . . [a] spirited defense of Trilling.”—Jeffrey Meyers, Commonweal
“[A] welcome book . . . [that] makes abundantly clear it is still possible to pick up and read Trilling—as Leavis once said about a poem of Donne’s—‘as we read the living.’”—William H. Pritchard, Hudson Review
Publication Date: February 5, 2013
