The Tower of Babel

There are two Isaac Babels: Lionel Trilling's Babel and Cynthia Ozick's Babel. The critic's and the novelist's two interpretations of the great Russian-Jewish writer--who rode with and wrote about the Cossacks, and who was murdered by Stalin in 1940, in gratitude for Babel's allegiance to the Revolution--are also two different versions of American Jewishness.

If you're the type of person given to lamenting the deterioration of serious reading and writing, here's one way you can lift your spirits: Read Trilling's famous introduction to the 1955 English translation of Babel's Red Cavalry, a collection of short stories inspired by Babel's experiences with the Cossacks. Trilling's offering has got to be one of the most obtuse literary essays ever written. It would never have made it into print today.

Of course, Trilling had a prodigious and unique literary mind. Essays like "Reality in America" and "On the Teaching of Modern Literature" make you recall that there was a time when literary critics didn't just review books; they rubbed their intellect against society until the sparks flew. Sincerity and Authenticity, Trilling's masterpiece, is a brilliant intellectual synthesis and an outpouring of original ideas. But maybe that book is so memorable because it was animated by Trilling's own problem with authenticity.

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