The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays - Hardcover

Trilling, Lionel; Wieseltier, Leon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374257949 ISBN 13: 9780374257941

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2000

Synopsis

Collects essays on Twain, Dos Passos, Hemingway, Keats, Wordsworth, Frost, and "Mansfield Park," and includes the preface to the author's "The Liberal Imagination."

About this title

Review:

"Wieseltier ... has chosen wisely ... One can recommend this book as either an introduction to or reminder of Lionel Trilling, one of the few intelligent men of our time toward whose work ... an intellectual obligation exists."--Richard Gilman," The New York Times Book Review"
"Each essay makes points that are both fresh and timeless. The sheer muscle of the mind whose prose you are reading is evident in limber, seemingly effortless argument ... His interest in morality as expressed in literature is so deep and nuanced that reading him reminds one that to think about these matters is far more interesting, entertaining, and even exhilarating than it is improving."--Katherine A. Powers, "The Boston Sunday Globe"""
"What Wieseltier's compendium now makes available is the mind of a serious traveller to the most exalted, and often the most problematical, stations of art and ideas and manners."--Cynthia Ozick, "The New Yorker "
"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

"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""

About the Author:

Lionel Trilling (190575) is the author of the collections "Beyond Culture," "The Liberal Imagination," and the posthumously published "Speaking of Literature and Society." He was a professor at Columbia University. Leon Wieseltier isthe editorof "The New Republic "and lives in New York City."

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0374257949
• ISBN 13: 9780374257941
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 572
• Editor: Wieseltier Leon