{"product_id":"moral-agents-edward-mendelson-9781590177761","title":"Moral Agents: Eight Twentieth-Century American Writers","description":"\u003cp\u003eA deeply considered and provocative new look at major American writers--including Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, and W.H. Auden--Edward Mendelson's \u003ci\u003eMoral Agents\u003c\/i\u003e is also a work of critical biography in the great tradition of Plutarch, Samuel Johnson, and Emerson. Any important writer, in Mendelson's view, writes in response to an idea of the good life that is inseparable from the life the writer lives. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Fusing biography and criticism and based on extensive new research, \u003ci\u003eMoral Agents\u003c\/i\u003e presents challenging new portraits of eight writers--novelists, critics, and poets--who transformed American literature in the turbulent twentieth century. Eight sharply distinctive individuals--inspired, troubled, hugely ambitious--who reimagined what it means to be a writer. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e There's Saul Bellow, a novelist determined to rule as a patriarch, who, having been neglected by his father, in turn neglected his son in favor of young writers who presented themselves as his literary heirs. Norman Mailer's extraordinary ambition, suppressed insecurity, and renegade metaphysics muddled the novels through which he hoped to change the world, yet these same qualities endowed him with an uncanny sensitivity and deep sympathy to the pathologies of American life that make him an unequaled political reporter. William Maxwell wrote sad tales of small-town life and surrounded himself with a coterie of worshipful admirers. As a powerful editor at \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e, he exercised an enormous and constraining influence on American fiction that is still felt today. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Preeminent among the critics is Lionel Trilling, whose \u003ci\u003eLiberal Imagination\u003c\/i\u003e made him a celebrity sage of the anxiously tranquilized 1950s, even as his calculated image of Olympian reserve masked a deeply conflicted life and contributed to his ultimately despairing worldview. Dwight Macdonald, by contrast, was a haute-WASP anarchist and aesthete driven by an exuberant moral commitment, in a time of cautious mediocrity, to doing the right thing. Alfred Kazin, from a poor Jewish émigré background, remained an outsider at the center of literary New York, driven both to escape from and do justice to the deepest meanings of his Jewish heritage. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Perhaps most intriguing are the two poets, W.H. Auden and Frank O'Hara. Early in his career, Auden was tempted to don the mantle of the poet as prophet, but after his move from England to America he lived and wrote in a spirit of modesty and charity born out of a deeply idiosyncratic understanding of Christianity. O'Hara, tireless partygoer and pioneering curator at MoMA, wrote much of his poetry for private occasions. Its lasting power has proven to be something different from its avant-garde reputation: personal warmth, individuality, rootedness in ancient traditions, and openness to the world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Edward Mendelson\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1590177762\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781590177761\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e New York Review of Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 03\/10\/2015\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 224\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.80lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.30h x 5.50w x 0.90d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e 02\/01\/2015 pg. 83\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eShelf Awareness\u003c\/i\u003e 03\/20\/2015\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e 04\/27\/2015\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e 05\/24\/2015 pg. 30\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChoice\u003c\/i\u003e 09\/01\/2015","brand":"Edward Mendelson","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":48088599560447,"sku":"9781590177761","price":21.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_afac41cb-16f9-493d-b930-b2f52fdfdcdb.jpg?v=1769105665","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/moral-agents-edward-mendelson-9781590177761","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}