Tom MacInnesOct 20
From the Library of Dr. Oliver Sacks: Book Review #9: The Liberal Imagination by Lionel Trilling https://tommacinneswriter.com/2025/10/20/from-the-library-of-dr-oliver-sacks-book-review-9-the-liberal-imagination-by-lionel-trilling/ ##books, ##DrOliverSacks, ##FromTheLibraryOfDrOliverSacks, ##HighFidelity, ##LionelTrilling, ##TheLiberalImagination
From the Library of Dr. Oliver Sacks: Book Review #9: The Liberal Imagination by Lionel Trilling

NOTE: Today’s book review was inspired by another book entitled Letters. That book was a memoir of scientist and storyteller Dr. Oliver Sacks, told through a lifetime of his personal correspondence…

Tom MacInnes, Writer
bsmall2May 22, 2025
For my students #DonQuijote is just the name of a store... So much to think here gets incoherent... #LionelTrilling: "In any genre it may happen that te first great example contains the whole potentiality of the genre. It has been said [Alfred North Whitehead] that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato."
"general confusion.. the ideal.. fanciful.. romantic.. is shown to be ridiculous.. But Cervantes changed horses in midstream and found that he was riding Rosinante..." Rosinante is also an interesting Japanese publisher.
#DonQuijote #RosinantePublisher
bs2Mar 20, 2023
> For us the legendary strongholds of snobbery are the Hollywood studios, where two thousand dollars a week dare not talk to three hundred dollars a week for fear he be taken for nothing more than fifteen hundred dollars a week.
In an essay, #MannersMorals and The Novel, #LionelTrilling on #Snobbery in #Hollywood reminded me of similar obsevations by #DouglasRushkoff in the book #LifeInc. I wonder how much of this was covered in #VancePackard's The #StatusSeekers?
Show threadbs2Mar 20, 2023
> Snobbery is pride in status without pride in function. And it is an uneasy pride of status. It always asks, “Do I belong—do I really belong? And does he belong? And if I am observed talking to him, will it make me seem to belong or not to belong?” It is the peculiar vice.. of bourgeois democratic societies...
#LionelTrilling on #Snobbery
Show threadbs2Mar 20, 2023
Why so much bullshit? Money?
> The characteristic work of the novel is to record the illusion that snobbery generates and to try to penetrate to the truth which, as the novel assumes, lies hidden beneath all the false appearances. #Money, #Snobbery the ideal of status, these become in themselves the objects of fantasy, the support of the fantasies of love, freedom, charm, power...
#LionelTrilling in the book, The #MoralObligation #ToBeIntelligent, essay,
#MannersMorals And #TheNovel
Show threadbs2Jun 6, 2022
> #Snobbery is pride in status without pride in function. And it is an uneasy pride of status.. "Do I belong..? And does he belong? And if I am observed talking to him, will it make me seem to belong or.." It is the peculiar vice.. of bourgeois democratic societies.. legendary strongholds of snobbery are the Hollywood studios.. The dominant emotions of snobbery are uneasiness, self-consciousness, self-defensiveness, the sense that one is not quite real but can.. acquire reality.
#LionelTrilling
bs2Jun 6, 2022
> In any genre it may happen that the first great example contains the whole potentiality of the genre. It has been said that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato. It can be said that all prose fiction is a variation on the theme of #DonQuixote.
https://libgen.rocks/ads.php?md5=adbeba9fe81ec21540a33a9134050685&downloadname=10.2307/4332909
#LionelTrilling #TowardsLiberalEducation #AlfredNorthWhitehead on #Plato applied to the #Novel and #DonQuijote of #Cervantes. #EduardoGaleano says the first novels were by the Japanese women "SeiShonagon and #MurasakiShikibu