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In its obituary of Lionel Trilling, the New York Times noted that in spite of his stature a man of letters, Trilling neither founded nor affiliated himself with any recognizable school or ism. He left behind now-prominent former students different Allen Ginsberg, John Hollander, and Norman Podhoretz, but no disciples to spread the Trilling word. His influence can be measured much by what he was and by the example he provided, said his obituarist, as by any particular doctrine or method.' Like the writer for the Times, Mark Krupnick, in his new intellectual biography of Trilling, is inclined to ponder iconographic opposed to his practical legacy. Although most of Lionel Trilling and the Fate of Cultural Criticism is devoted to what Trilling did indeed write, Krupnick is finally more interested in him an exemplar for the discipline of English, particularly after its decade or so of engagement with continental theory. Trilling's career is an object lesson in the glories and difficulties of being an intellectual in America, says Krupnick. And, in the end, it is not his particular attitudes but his way of being an intellectual and his kind of criticism that I have wanted to recommend an exemplary alternative to the academic criticism we have lately had (p. 8). Ironically, Krupnick is at

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