Books, Arts & Manners: The Last Gentleman

The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Lionel and Diana Trilling, by Diana Trilling (Harcourt, Brace, 432 pp., $24.95)

THIS remarkable book is beautifully evocative of an important period of American cultural life, the years 1930 to 1960, a cultural period both intellectually sophisticated and startlingly naïve about much. It also brings us a careful, honest, and in the end very moving portrait of two powerful New York intellectuals, the author and her husband. It contains—at least for me, who knew them in the Fifties and Sixties—some surprises about both.

About the Author

Jeffrey Hart

Jeffrey Hart is a contributor to National Review.

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The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Lionel and Diana Trilling, by Diana Trilling (Harcourt, Brace, 432 pp., $24.95)

THIS remarkable book is beautifully evocative of an important period of American cultural life, the years 1930 to 1960, a cultural period both intellectually sophisticated and startlingly naïve about much. It also brings us a careful, honest, and in the end very moving portrait of two powerful New York intellectuals, the author and her husband. It contains—at least for me, who knew them in the Fifties and Sixties—some surprises about both.