Product Description: From small questions of taste to large questions concerning the nature of existence, intellectual debate takes up much of our time. In this work literary critic Arthur Krystal examines what most commentators ignore: the role of temperament and taste in the forming of aesthetic and ideological opinions...read more

An anthology of essays, criticism, and reviews, unpublished for fifty years, includes a selection of writings by W. H. Auden, Jacques Barzun, and Lionel Trilling from the publications of The Reader's Subscription Book Club and the The Mid-Century Book Society, including Trilling's thoughts on The Wind in the Willows, Auden on drugs and cooking, and Barzun on the work of Robert Lowell. 17,500 first printing. (view table of contents)