The Partisan Review Anthology
Various (Edmund Wilson, Lionel Trilling, etc.) · 1946
The New York Intellectuals created the template for the American critical essay: combative, learned, politically serious, unwilling to separate aesthetics from politics. The Partisan Review circle (Trilling, Wilson, Kazin, McCarthy) is essential background.
The case against
Combat journalism from wars nobody remembers. Half these essays are moves in quarrels, Stalinists versus Trotskyists, proletarian fiction versus high modernism, that now need footnotes to locate, and the confidence that Manhattan opinion was world opinion dates every page. The prose performs erudition at you. Wilson and Trilling survive; much of the rest is archaeology.
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 →
