When Men Were the Only Models We Had: My Teachers Fadiman, Barzun, Trilling (Personal Takes) - Hardcover

"A tough and lovely memoir, one that stokes deep admiration and gratitude for those who went before."-Kirkus "Heilbrun's engaging memoir evokes a bygone era of intellectual life, when clarity of language and exacting prose marked lively critical conversations on politics, society, and literature."-Library Journal "Noted feminist literary critic Heilbrun (who also writes mysteries as Amanda Cross) contemplates how three men shaped her idea of herself as an intellectual. To a younger generation, all three of Heilbrun's mentors Jacques Barzun, Clifton Fadiman, and Lionel Trilling might need identification, though they once loomed over the American literary and academic scene. Their example showed the young Heilbrun how a public life of the mind might be lived. That none of them believed that women were capable of living this life might seem to disqualify them as useful models for an ambitious young female graduate student, but Heilbrun maintains that their basic misogyny saved her from too slavish imitation. . . . Heilbrun is generous in her assessment of the legacy of her mentors; additionally, her recollections of academia in the 1950s and '60s may serve as an explanation of why affirmative admissions to universities were deemed necessary and why they may still serve some purpose."-Publishers Weekly "A study of the influences of Clifton Fadiman, Lionel Trilling, and Jacques Barzun on Heilbrun's own literary development, but the book is far broader than that-really, a history of Columbia University in the turmoil of the sixties and beyond. And this isn't for women only!"-Maxine Kumin, Ploughshares

When Men Were the Only Models We Had My Teachers Fadiman, Barzun, Trilling Carolyn G. Heilbrun "Heilbrun's engaging memoir evokes a bygone era of intellectual life, when clarity of language and exacting prose marked lively critical conversations on politics, society, and literature."--Library Journal When Men Were the Only Models We Had is a loving, admiring, but stringent account of youthful enthusiasms, of the romance of ideas, of the intellectual brilliance of three unwitting mentors, and of the hopelessness of female ambition in the years before the feminist movement of the last three decades of the last century. And it is, in the end, a book that offers splendid proof that the models we once had are no longer the only ones before us. Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Avalon Professor in the Humanities Emerita, taught at Columbia for 33 years. She is the author numerous books, including Toward a Recognition of Androgyny, Writing a Woman's Life, and The Last Gift of Time. As Amanda Cross, she is author of twelve best-selling novels featuring the detective Kate Fansler. Personal Takes 2001 | 168 pages | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 ISBN 978-0-8122-3632-3 | Cloth | $32.50t | £21.50 World Rights | Women's/Gender Studies, Education, Literature Short copy: "A study of the influences of Clifton Fadiman, Lionel Trilling, and Jacques Barzun on Heilbrun's own literary development, but the book is far broader than that--really, a history of Columbia University in the turmoil of the sixties and beyond. And this isn't for women only!"--Maxine Kumin, Ploughshares