Diana Trilling oral history collection, 1976-1991

Biographical Note

Diana Trilling (1905-1996) was a literary critic, author, and cultural commentator

Scope and Contents

The Diana Trilling oral history collection contains interviews collected by Trilling that document her intellectual milieu in mid-20th century New York City. The core group of interviews were taken by Trilling herself as part of an unfinished book project. The project went through several phases of inquiry and was only ever semi-completed. The shifts in focus and project trajectory explain the content and form of the interviews. Financing was an issue that troubled Trilling throughout the project. In 1976-1977, she entered into a collaboration with Columbia University's Oral History Research Office (OHRO). Trilling would conduct the interviews, the OHRO would do initial transcriptions, and Trilling was to edit the transcripts. The OHRO would make the interviews available for research in full after Trilling's book had been completed and sufficient time had passed. The interviewing and much of the initial transcription was completed. Despite receiving modest funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Rockefeller Foundation from 1977-1979, Trilling did not complete editing or deposit edited transcripts with the OHRO. As such, the collection's transcripts are verbatim, but unaudited for accuracy. Trilling's work product from the editing process remained with her and was eventually donated to Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library as part of the Diana Trilling papers. The focus of the project shifted over time. Trilling's husband Lionel died in late 1975, in the midst of writing a "cultural-intellectual" autobiography. Trilling started interviewing in the context of continuing this work and appraising his personal papers for donation to an archives. As such, many interviews focus on the life and personality of Lionel Trilling. As she continued interviewing, though, Trilling expanded her focus to the debates on the Left of the 1930s-1950s and to the intellectual scenes around New York City's literary and political journals. Within a year of starting interviewing, Trilling's goal had become to write a "cultural-historical" monograph on various intellectual threads of her scene. As a result, the themes of the interviews vary considerably. Some subjects of note include the life of Lionel Trilling, factional disputes on the American Left in the 1930s-1940s, World War II, McCarthyism, intellectual freedom, literary criticism, 1960s cultural issues, gender relations, art, and Neoconservatism. Whether addressing politics or criticism, many interviews assume a philosophical tone. The narrators from Trilling's project are: Renata Adler, Quentin Anderson (two interviews: 1976 and 1984), Quentin and Thelma Anderson, Thelma Anderson, Jacques Barzun, Daniel Bell, Eric Bentley, Isaiah and Aline Berlin, Robert Gorham Davis, Midge Decter, Stephen Donadio, Clifton Fadiman, Jules Feiffer, Herbert Ferber, Daniel Fuchs, Walter Goldwater, Clement Greenberg, James Grossman, James and Elsa Grossman, Michael Harrington, Elinor Rice Hays and Paul R. Hays, Bede White, John Hollander, Carl Hovde, Irving Howe, John Hunt, Stanley Kunitz, Sam Lipman, Dwight Macdonald, Steven Marcus, Sarah Moon, Sidney Morgenbesser, Felix Morrow, George Novak, William Phillips, Natalie Robbins, Michael Rosenthal, Richard Halworth Rovere, Peter Shaw, Bob Shulman, Fritz Richard Stern, Jack and Susan Thompson, Virgil Thomson, Paul Warsaw, and William Wright. The collection also includes various other recordings that were in Trilling's possession, but not part of her project. These include fourteen interviews in which Trilling is the interviewee (including a particularly large one conducted by Christopher Zinn), two lectures by Trilling, an interview by Trilling from a separate project about Radcliffe College, and a recording of a radio show on Lionel Trilling

Subjects

• Authors, American.
• Communism and intellectuals.
• Conservatism--United States--History.
• Criticism.
• Intellectuals--New York (State)--New York--Interviews.
• Interviews.
• Literary quarrels.
• New York (N.Y.)--Intellectual life--20th century.
• Oral histories (literary works)
• Trilling, Diana.
• Trilling, Lionel, 1905-1975.