Volume 22, Number 20 · December 11, 1975
Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)
By John Thompson
Many readers of this review will be among those who feel most deeply the death of Lionel Trilling. He had long been known and honored everywhere, in England and Europe as well as here. But he had begun as a New York intellectual, speaking to that small peculiar bunch, often enough about itself and its ways, attacking its misconceptions, defending its existence. Once years ago when its weakness for taking up literary fads was ridiculed, he replied to the effect that it was a good thing for a lot of people to be talking about, say, Kafka this year. It made for a kind of community. We are among the dispersed and doubtless much diminished heirs of that tribe. Of course Trilling belongs to the world, but he belonged particularly to the New York intellectuals, ever since his early writings appeared in the Menorah Journal.
Feature, 1103 words
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