The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays

by Lionel Trilling, Leon Wieseltier (Editor)

With this re-publication of Lionel Trilling's finest essays, Leon Wieseltier offers readers of many generations, a rich overview of Trilling's achievement. The exhilarating 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.

Genres: Philosophy, Essays, Nonfiction, Criticism, Literary Criticism, Literature, Writing

592 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Lionel Mordecai Trilling was an American literary critic, short story writer, essayist, and teacher. He was one of the leading U.S. critics of the 20th century who analyzed the contemporary cultural, social, and political implications of literature. With his wife Diana Trilling (née Rubin), whom he married in 1929, he was a member of the New York Intellectuals and contributor to the Partisan Review.

Reviews

[Eric Byrd · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot recommend this too highly. Trilling's eminence as a critic continues to amaze me. There's a grandeur and a seriousness in every one of these essays. So many who presume to treat a particular novel, story or poem as a specimen of history, of sociology, of philosophy, of "the politics of culture" etc. too often end up using the works under consideration as pretexts for extra-literary blather, as indicted representatives of some to-be-chastened old regime, as excuses for the critic to grind their own, often dull, socio-political axe. The Anglo-American New Critics and the Russo-Czech Formalists have always impressed me with their tasteful abstention. But Trilling shows that with a scrupulous sense of what's relevant to the discussion and an unresentful respect for the work he's approaching, the hard-to-pull-off attempt to show literature's connectedness can yield rich insight. Trilling's strength, his difference, is that the work is always enough; he talks about politics and philosophy and social history but the privileged ground of the discussion is always the literary work. He can mostly ignore technical questions of style and form without appearing to devalue the work, because even if Keats and Austen and James aren't preeminently master stylists to him, they are something just as impressive, moral philosophers, bearers of luminous comment. His concentration on authors as thinkers actually gives one a more exalted sense of the literary work than you get from the New Critics. But generalizing about the most appropriate critical method is a crazy-making waste of time: Trilling exemplifies Eliot's remark that there is really no best qualification beyond being very intelligent.

[David]

Word on the street is that this was *the* beach book of choice among the delightful guidos and guidettes on MTV's "Jersey Shore" this past summer:

[Andrew]

Lionel Trilling is one of those great ecumenical thinkers. He has the pragmatism and the optimism of an American, but with a fantastic openness towards European ideas. His writing style is lucid and concise-- fitting with the cultural journals he cut his teeth at-- and his expository writings on specific thinkers (Wordsworth, Dreiser, Nietzsche, etc.) are interesting as comments on culture and literature in general as well as bright observations about those thinkers. In many ways, he reminds me of a sort of American Adorno... a flawed éminence grise espousing both leftist hope but ultimately expressing an exasperation at the sheer idiocy of the world around him. I doubt many people read Trilling widely nowadays, but I think young Americans, especially, would really adore him. If he was alive today, he'd doubtless be out marching with the occupiers.

[Conrad]

My current nominee for Most Self-Important Book Title Ever. The essays look good, though; I've only skimmed them and would like to read this in more detail.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite book of all time.

[Jina Laguna · Rating 5 out of 5]

The only thing less than steller about this fabulous collection of essays is the title. The title is neither here nor there.

Once you get past that, you will be floored by Lionel Trilling's powerful, incisive and beautiful literary criticisms. It floored me. This book contains his enduring essay on Mansfield Park which, for me, has long been a high water mark in literary criticism. His essays on Keats, Robert Frost and Lolita are also stand outs. A must read.

[Ariella]

Picked this up on the street in Park Slope. I love Brooklyn.

[Jackson Cyril · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title portentously broadcasts this to be a work of great intellectual acumen and ability. Others may think this the case, but I disagree. Trilling mostly comments on third-rate works ("Mansfield Park" being one exception), and while an essay on Keats' letters is intellectually interesting, it is hardly morally edifying.

[Alex Zinoman]

To revisit: Wordsworth and the Rabbis, Huckleberry Finn, The Poet as Hero, Mansfield Park, The Fate of Pleasure, James Joyce in his Letters

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trilling was one of the first critics I read, far more years ago now than I imagined I might live. He is still magnificent--thoughtful, incisive, and, in an age in which clarity seems outmoded, lucid while willing to explore ideas wherever they might lead and to shine a light on every nuance. Humanism may be a dirty word in many circles now; read Trilling to see why it should not be so considered.

[booklady]

The title intrigues me and the author was a professor at Columbia Universtity from '32 until his death in '75. He wrote on and about Literature; why we read Jane Austen, Twain, Hemingway, Keats, Eliot, etc.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good thinker. The writing is compromised by Trilling's frequent reaching for the sentence of the greatest allowable generality, which then must be carefully worded. It makes the reading unnecessarily difficult. Particulars come as a relief.

[Izetta Autumn]

Have to read it because I love the title. Love it.

[foundfoundfound · Rating 3 out of 5]

essays on literary subjs the most interesting. book title is daft; intellection & virtue are not connected or coterminous. anyone can be clever. who is good?