Lionel Trilling and the Fate of Cultural Criticism

"Krupnick uses both Trilling's life and his fiction with great tact to illuminate his critical project, and shows how his essays too can be related to his personal myth, indeed just how autobiographical they are... Besides using Trilling's life and fiction well, Krupnick brings to bear a very thorough knowledge of the cultural milieu of New York intellectuals, which is something very essential for a writer on Trilling, since he interacted continuously with the people and issues that figured in that world... This book should take its place as the best book available on its subject." —Morris Dickstein

"I don't know any writer who has sorted out the tortuous and elusive phases of Lionel Trilling's critical career as clearly, and with as much sympathetic-critical penetration, as Mark Krupnick has in this book. But his book is not just a study of one critic; it is a reminder that literary criticism, before it became an academic 'field,' aspired to be a comprehensive criticism of culture—and that it might aspire to be that again." —Gerald Graff