Moral Agents · Eight Twentieth-Century American Writers

In Lives of the Intellectuals one of contemporary America’s leading critics and scholars offers a provocative reassessment of the lives and work of eight influential twentieth- century American writers:

Lionel Trilling

Dwight Macdonald

W.H. Auden

William Maxwell

Saul Bellow

Alfred Kazin

Norman Mailer

Frank O’Hara

Drawing on newly published letters and diaries, Edward Mendelson explores the responses of these writers, very public figures all, to major historical events—among them the rise and fall of fascism, the cold war, the struggles for civil rights and against the Vietnam War, and the sexual revolution—and shows how intensely personal concerns, relating to childhood, religion, status, sex, and money, largely shaped their views. Mendelson’s vivid portraits cut to the quick, changing our perceptions of these brilliant, complicated, often deeply troubled men while offering readers a new understanding of their contributions to American intellectual and political life.