opinions & ViewsnThe Reviewer as Cultural CriticnDiana Trilling: Reviewing the Forties;nHarcourt Brace Jovanovich;nNew York.nby Charles MosernIf this compilation were nothingnmore than a collection of reviews, onenmight feel uncomfortable in discussingnit. rather as if one were writing aboutnwriting about writing. Although mechanicallynit is a gathering of some ofnthe regular columns which iV’Irs. Trillingnwrote as a working reviewer of currentnfiction for the Nation from late 1942nto 1949. in its entirety Reviewing tloenForties is more than the sum of its parts.nIt is. indeed, a cultural document in itsnown right, one which deals with a majornconstituent element of any nation’s culture:nits imaginative fiction.nThe literary element of a culture isncomprised not only of works by itsnwell-known authors —the John Herseys.nSaul Bellows, Truman Capotes andnothers—but also of much underbrush,nthe ephemeral writings which soon dropnfrom our explicit cultural consciousness.nIn an age before the advent of television—and.nat least for the intelligentsia,nto a considerable e.xtent thereaftern— fiction provides the images throughnwhich a culture conceives of itself evennthough they may sometimes contradictnreality. In addition, the culture actsnupon literature, even to the extent ofnoccasioning a literary debacle. ThusnMrs. Trilling attributes the failure ofnMerriam ModelFs The Sound of Yearsn11946) to an “imbalance between thenquality of her perceptions and the qualitynof her literary standards”: contemporarynAmerican culture provided Model!nwith no image of the heroine she shouldnhave brought forth in her book, andnCharles A. Moser is Professor of SlavicnLanguage & Literature at George WashingtonnUniversity in Washington. D. C.n6nChronicles of Culturenshe was insufficiently “revolutionary”nas a writer to create that image bvnherself.nMrs. Trilling held up under thenpressures of regular reviewing for anjournal of high quality and great prestige,nfor she had a lively sense of thenimportance of fiction to a culture. “Literature.”nshe writes, “is no mere decorationnof life but an index of the healthnor sickness of a society … so the debasementnof our literary’ standards reflectsna loss of standard throughout ournlives.” Literature is a serious matternfor her. and she succeeds in transformingnthe reviewing of transitory novelsninto a facet of social and cultural criticism.nOne could go so far as to arguenthat mere plot summaries supplied bynreviewers can provide a valuable approachnto a culture of a given time andnplace, for they tell us what “stories”nare deemed possible in that culture.nxV culture embeds, among othernthings, a certain network of ideas, andnMrs. Trilling as cultural critic is muchnmore concerned with things of the mind.nShe believes firmly that there is a distmctionnto be made between good andnbad ideas, which may have favorablenor evil consequences for the culturenin which they circulate. And novelsnhave much to do with the disseminationnof ideas. “There is no such thing as annovel without ideas.” she comments inndiscussing Bellow’s The Victim. “Angood novel has good ideas, a bad novelnhas bad ideas.” This view leads her notnonly to praise good books, but to damnnbad ones, as when, for instance, shencondemns Allan Seager’s Equinox as an”mad, bad, and dangerous book.” As anworking reviewer she stands in no superstitiousnawe of print. She knows that,njust as books may improve their readers’nminds, so also may they corrupt them.nHer concern with the intellectualnaspect of fiction leads Mrs. Trillingnnnto some interesting if controversial evaluationsnof major writers. For instance,nshe finds Vladimir Nabokov’s Bend Sinisternuninspiring, and decides that it isn”written in a claustrophobic style innwhich the reader’s mind is allowed tondo no work of its own.” Again, she complainsnthat George Orwell’s 1984 exertsnundue “pressure” upon the reader, bynwhich we must assume that she meansnintellectual pressure leading to acceptancenof the author’s intellectual premises.nMrs. Trilling apparently believesnthat the successful author must stimulatenthe play of his reader’s mind withinnsuitable parameters without imposingnexcessive constraints upon him or compellingnhim to adopt a certain pointnof view.niMrs. Trilling rarely mentions “literarynart” in her reviews, but she is sufficientlynsensitive to this aspect of fictionnto recognize that novels are not merelynintellectual exercises. Thus, for example,nwhile opposing on the intellectualnlevel certain “false notions'” injectedninto American culture by Ernest Hemingway,nshe also avers that he is a “goodnwriter.” She pavs homage to the “marvelousnresources oi language ” exhibitednin Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’snMen. for she thinks that language cannscarcely be “matched in American fiction.”nAnd yet too, something is missingnat the core of Warren’s book: a sensenof the “inner human mystery,” and beyondnthat “the mystery of the historicalnprocess.” Thus there are things in literaturenwhich the reviewer must recognizenintuitively: artistic quality, fornone. and a feeling for the importantnelements of life which cannot be discursivelynanalyzed but only depictednthrough the medium of art.nOne of those elements is style. Innliterature as in life, it is not merelynideas which are important, but the stylenin which they are clothed. Personalnstyle enables us to recognize a writern