The Liberal Imagination
Lionel Trilling · 1950
The most important American literary criticism collection of the postwar era. Trilling argued for the moral complexity of literature against political reductionism, and did it with a prose style of unusual clarity and depth.
The case against
Trilling's targets (Parrington, Dreiser, the Kinsey Report, the Stalinist middlebrow of his moment) have faded, so you spend half the book reconstructing the quarrel before you can judge it. His key term, liberalism, never receives a definition; the prose qualifies and requalifies until positions blur. Mandarin manners, period furniture, and an argument that worked best on enemies who no longer exist.
Essays · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
