NOTE: Today’s book review was inspired by another book entitled Letters. That book was a memoir of scientist and storyteller Dr. Oliver Sacks, told through a lifetime of his personal correspondence with friends, family, patients and many other interesting people. Over the course of his letter writing, Dr. Sacks often made reference to the written works of others. Today’s book is one such work that he referenced.
The Context in Which Dr. Sacks Made Reference to The Liberal Imagination by Lionel Trilling
In August of 1963, Oliver Sacks wrote a letter to his friend Jonathan Miller and Miller’s wife, Rachel. In 1963, Miller had resigned his position in the comedy troupe Beyond the Fringe and was setting the groundwork for a move into the world of theatrical directing. Beyond the Fringe had been achieving a great deal of success up until this point and had moved to London to continue their work in a larger market at the time that Miller had stepped aside. All throughout this transitional period, Miller and Sacks had kept in touch via letters and phone calls. As was always the case with these two friends, Sacks was highly supportive of his friend and had suggested that, instead of newspaper interviews and magazine articles, Miller should write a book. It was during this conversation that Sacks mentioned Lionel Trilling (along with a fellow literary critic named Edmund Wilson).
“I am constantly reading you, or about you, and am overjoyed at the incredible opportunities opening out in every direction. I hope that you will soon find the leisure and incentive to write a book, innumerable books – for incessant flittering in magazines, though it’s a great way to start (didn’t Trilling and Wilson all start this way) may finally be rather destructive, and also tend to make you static in a way.”
- Oliver Sacks, August 21, 1963, pg 63 of the book Letters
A Brief Outline of the Plot of The Liberal Imagination by Lionel Trilling
The Liberal Imagination by Lionel Trilling is a collection of essays that Trilling wrote about the interconnections between the work of the most prolific American authors of the first half of the twentieth century and the politics of the time. Through his essays (which appeared separately in magazines such as the New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker Magazine, etc), Trilling examined a variety of ways in which the state of literary criticism was a political act, in and of itself, along with examples of authors who were influenced by the political scene they found themselves in and/or authors who helped shape and influence the politics of the day by virtue of the characters they created and the stories they told. Lionel Trilling is considered to be one of the leading literary critics of his time. Trilling was also a university professor, as well as being a member of a loose collection of thinkers and ponderers known as The New York Intellectuals (along with luminaries such as Saul Bellow, Susan Sontag and many others who helped shape the cultural scene in America after WWII). Not surprisingly, there is an authoritative and scholarly air about the subject matter that Trilling dissects in his series of essays.
My Thoughts on The Liberal Imagination by Lionel Trilling (for what that is worth)
If you are a faithful reader of this blog then you will be aware that one of strongest beliefs lay in the power of the Arts to shape society in positive ways. I have much respect for the writers and artists and sculptors and dancers and poets and singers of this world; both in terms of their level of creativity and in the manner in which that creative output can inspire ordinary citizens to think, feel or act in a certain way. A most obvious example of this would be how music, poetry and literature all combined to fuel the antiwar movement in the 1960s, when America had gone to war with Vietnam. The intertwining of art and politics has been an important story throughout modern history. One of the many consequences of this is the rise of a class of commentators known as literary critics. These fine folks have made it their mission to attempt to rise above it all and view the Arts/Politics scene from a “big picture” perspective. As a general comment, I think it is important to have intelligent observers available and on guard to offer their insight to the rest of us as we deal with everyday life down in the muck and the mire where we find ourselves. Having said that, I would agree with those who state that Lionel Trilling was someone whose opinion was worth listening to and that his book The Liberal Imagination is an important contribution to the national conversation on the impact of the Arts on the politics of our lives and vice versa.
As for what I thought of The Liberal Imagination myself, I found the book a tough slog. For me, it was a difficult book to read. When I talk to others about my own writing, one of the things I always comment on is that I basically know who my audience is and write for them accordingly. As an elementary school teacher, I spent thirty years of my life explaining things to an audience of children in ways that they could easily understand. With The Liberal Imagination, I never had the sense that Trilling was writing for someone like me. I think that his target audience was probably fellow intellectuals and deep thinkers. As I struggled to grasp his ideas and to maintain my level of concentration, I couldn’t help but think that I could never qualify for membership in Trilling’s New York Intellectuals club and that Trilling and his gang would probably eviscerate me for having had the audacity to have even applied in the first place. I remain steadfast in my belief that Art shapes life and life shapes the artist, too and that all of that nebulous interactivity is very important to us all. However, the weighty, ponderous nature of Trilling’s remarks did little to inspire me or provide me with new and profound insights. Whether that says more about Trilling’s abilities as a communicator or my ability as a thinker, I will leave that for others to ascertain. But just because Trilling’s writing style wasn’t conducive to my learning style doesn’t diminish the importance of The Liberal Imagination as a commentary on the world of Arts and politics in America post WWII. All that it really means is that the book wasn’t for me. It may be for you. We are not carbon copies of each other. Perhaps you are more of a philosopher than me when it comes to the more complex issues of our times. If so then, The Liberal Imagination by Lionel Trilling may be just the thing for you.
My own comfort zone is the world of music. If you regularly read my posts, you will know that the majority of my work has revolved around musicians, songs, soundtracks and the impact that they have collectively had on our lives. In order to appreciate where I am coming from as a writer and as a communicator, I want to stop for a moment and have you watch two short clips from a movie called High Fidelity that stars John Cusack, Jack Black and others. As a storyteller, I never wanted others to read my words and feel the lesser for having done so. I never wanted people to be intimidated by what I had to say. I have always hoped that my readers would be inspired to respond to my work with their own stories and insights thus initiating a shared conversation about a song or an artist or a memory that we both loved. But as you watch these short clips, (Clip 1) take a look at the group culture that exists within the record store among the staff, how elitist it is and how the opinions they each hold spark intense debates about things that you and I might deem as being trivial, (Clip 2) examine how Jack Black’s character emotionally abuses his customer and browbeats him into buying way more albums than the guy ever had intended. In the end, over time, I believe that the customer will learn and grow and may even be grateful for having encountered Jack Black’s character that day in the record store but, at the moment, I am sure the experience was very uncomfortable. For me, that sums up my experience with The Liberal Imagination. I may one day come to view this book as holding a special place in my heart and my mind but, for now, I felt overwhelmed and intellectually intimidated and did not enjoy the experience of reading these essays which, as I said, I feel were more written for Trilling’s other intellectual friends than they were for folks like me. To see what I am talking about, click here and here to watch these clips from the movie High Fidelity.
Finally, as for Oliver Sacks and his letter to Jonathan Miller, I agree with the premise that Dr. Sacks put forth to his friend that there is more permanence to a good book than there often is to a lone magazine or newspaper article. As mentioned earlier in this post, all of the essays that made up The Liberal Imagination had appeared individually as articles on various media publications prior to being collected in one place as a book. Trilling achieved far greater recognition for his work after it appeared in book form than he had when each individual essay was published on its own. For Jonathan Miller, he was one of the hottest free agents in the Arts community in England in 1963, having just left Beyond the Fringe at the height of its fame as he had. I believe that his friend Oliver was trying to suggest to Miller that the time was right to capitalize on his fame with something of greater permanence than the magazine and newspaper articles in which he was appearing. As future letters between these two friends will reveal, Jonathan Miller was standing at the beginning of what would prove to be a long and varied career. Whether he ever took Oliver Sacks up on his advice to write a book is something I will leave for you to check for yourself on the interweb or else for me to reveal in a future post. For now, the advice was for Miller to write a book and put his thoughts, ideas and feelings down in a format that stood the best chance of having a lasting impact on the world. That certainly was what happened with Lionel Trilling and his thoughts on the intersection of the Arts and politics. Long after Lionel Trilling and his fellow New York Intellectuals have died and turned to dust, his seminal work The Liberal Imagination lives on, its legacy secure.
The link to the official website for Lionel Trilling can be found here.
The link to the official website for Dr. Oliver Sacks can be found here.
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