b2
PAR T ISAN REVIEW
in physical reality, social reality, psychological reality, or the like. But
as soon as one breaks with the suavity and the fluency of Mr. Tril–
ling's prose style long enough to think of Dostoevsky's novels, the
plausibility disappears: is the struggle between Dmitri Karamazov
and his father for the favors of Grushenka a matter of
social
pride,
even at the start? Only if we redefine social pride so broadly that
it has to do with the Oedipus complex and the libido and hence is
really not social pride at all. And the rubles which Grushenka wants:
is it money that she wants, or love and revenge, which are a matter
of
personal
pride; unless we want to stretch meanings again to make
all personal pride inseparable from or derived from social pride?
Do the arguments between Ivan and Alyosha Karamazov about the
existence of God have anything to do, at the start or at any other
time, with rubles or social pride? We know that in some circles, re–
ligious belief is connected with social pride in the form of social
reaction, but surely Mr. Trilling would not accept so sophistical a
version of social pride or so dishonest a version of religious belief.
Could Mr. Trilling, without casuistical ingenuity, maintain that the
poem of the Grand Inquisitor is a matter of social pride or rubles?
Are rubles or social pride involved when Alyosha is revolted by the
decaying corpse of the Elder Zossima? Of course, better embalming
methods and a concern for personal hygiene might be by elaborate
extension connected with social pride, but certainly this cannot be
Mr. Trilling's meaning. And this is but one novel; the negative ex–
amples would make an interminable list. Only by an expandable
and contractable definition of manners and of society can it be
maintained that "every situation" or even most situations in Dostoev–
sky "start and end in class" or in "a point of social pride and a cer–
tain number of rubles," or are in any serious sense a question of
manners at all.
It is also difficult to see how there can have been great Amer–
ican novels, as Mr. TriIIing says there have been, if the novel as he
has described it "never really established itself in America." Here
Mr. Trilling
is
operating again with several ambiguous definitions
at the same time; the novel in its classic form which begins with
the observation of manners and of the "social" world; the great
American novels which are somehow great, although unconcerned
with manners, lacking in social texture, and turned away from so-
