The Opposing Self
Lionel Trilling · 1955
Trilling's essays on Keats, Tolstoy, Orwell, and Howells are models of how to read with moral seriousness. The "opposing self," the self that resists culture, is his great subject. Brilliant, measured, irreplaceable.
The case against
Trilling qualifies every claim until it dissolves. The prose circles its subjects in long mandarin sentences about culture and the self, rarely landing on a text for more than a paragraph, and the Howells essay defends a writer almost nobody now reads. Moral seriousness, yes; you may finish an essay unsure what was asserted.
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 →
