On Culture and Literature

On Culture and Literature displays the style, brio, and independence of thought that makes Marvin Mudrick one of the few literary critics who is read for pleasure. This is cultural criticism at its most exciting, and Mudrick expands the field of criticism to include literature, political and musical works, autobiography, and science. The literary criticism establishment comes under fire, especially the power couple Lionel and Diana Trilling, as Mudrick brings the critic as reader to center stage: our human consciousness and ethical imagination encountering others through the heightened reality of a work of art. Mudrick invites readers along for the ride, in fresh encounters with Eliot, Hemingway, Bellow, and Mailer, with Lady Murasaki, Casanova, Chaucer, Tolstoy, and Shaw, writing throughout with characteristic leaps of insight and scholarship.