A Company of Readers: Uncollected Writings of W.H. Auden, Jacques Barzun, and Lionel Trilling from The Readers' Subscription and Mid-century Book Clubs

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Simon and Schuster, 2001 - Biography & Autobiography - 289 pages
In 1951, Jacques Barzun, W. H. Auden, and Lionel Trilling joined together to form the editorial board of the Readers' Subscription Book Club. Thus began a venture unique in the annals of American culture. Never before or since have three such eminent intellectuals collaborated to bring books to the attention of the general public.

Now, a half century later, "A Company of Readers" tells the story of this extraordinary partnership and presents for the first time a selection of essays from the publications of the Readers' Subscription Book Club and its successor, the Mid-Century Book Society.

As they composed their comments to club members, these distinguished editors freely shared with each other their notes and drafts. The result is criticism of the highest order: smart, humane, learned -- in short, stuff that makes for damn good reading. And because these pieces were written for the general public by men who knew that books still mattered, perhaps no other collection of essays gives so natural and vivid a picture of the cultural landscape at midcentury.

Together, Auden, Barzun, and Trilling would plunge into a pile of books and pick out what they liked, what they thought would instruct and delight. What they chose may surprise you. Here is Auden on J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Fellowship of the Ring, " Barzun on Virginia Woolf's "Writer's Diary, " and Trilling on Kenneth Grahame's "The Wind in the Willows." Each book, whether weighty or light, summoned from the editors a spirited appraisal, in language that welcomed any kind of reader.

The Mid-Century club disbanded in 1963, but its legacy lives on in these pages. "A Company of Readers" is essential to admirers of thisillustrious trio, and it offers a window on an America in which books took center stage.

 

Selected pages

Contents

As Uncomfortable as a Modern Self JACQUES BARZUN
3
Man Before Myth W H AUDEN
9
The Sense of History JACQUES BARZUN
43
Thinking What We Are Doing W H AUDEN
52
The Esthetic Society JACQUES BARZUN
60
Apologies to the Iroquois W H AUDEN
67
Short Novels of Colette W H AUDEN
93
A Triumph of the Comic View LIONEL TRILLING
100
The Tradition of the New JACQUES BARZUN
196
Bergman Unseen LIONEL TRILLING
205
Curtains LIONEL TRILLING
212
The Artist in Public Life JACQUES BARZUN
218
T S Eliot So Far W H AUDEN
225
The Word as Heard LIONEL TRILLING
236
Two Ways of Poetry W H AUDEN
242
A Poet of Honor W H AUDEN
256

A Review of the Alternate W H AUDEN
107
Dostoevsky in Siberia W H AUDEN
118
Lord of the Flies LIONEL TRILLING
159
Why Talk About Art? JACQUES BARZUN
165
Wisdom Wit Music W H AUDEN
171
The Lost Glory LIONEL TRILLING
183
Three Memoranda
265
Jameschoice for January THE EDITORS
272
Complete List of Essays and Reviews
278
Essays from The Griffin and The MidCentury
286
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About the author (2001)

Jacques Barzun, a historian and cultural critic, is one of the most prolific and wide-ranging American writers of the twentieth century. Barzun was born in Greteil, France, in 1907. He came to the United States in 1920, entered Columbia University in 1923, and graduated magna cum laude in 1927. He joined Columbia's faculty in 1929 as an instructor while continuing his studies in graduate school there, earning a doctorate in French history in 1932. Barzin was been associated with Columbia University for more than forty years. He became a full professor in 1945, was dean of graduate faculties from 1955 to 1958, dean of faculties from 1958 to 1967, and one of the sponsors of the university's two-year Western Civilization course, featuring the great books of Western literature. He retired from Columbia University in 1975, but has continued to write extensively. The core of Barzun's work, which he has intended for both a general and an academic audience, is the importance of studying history to understand the present and a fundamental respect for intellect. Although he has written on subjects as diverse as detective fiction and baseball, he is especially known for his many books on music, nineteenth-century romanticism and education. His works include Darwin, Marx and Wagner: Critique of a Heritage (1941), Romanticism and the Modern Ego (1943); The House of Intellect (1956), Race: A Study in Superstition (1965), Simple and Direct: A Rhetoric for Writers (1976) A Stroll with William James (1983), and The Culture We Deserve (1989). All feature Barzun's broad scholarship, careful thinking, and clear, witty style.

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