WILLIAM PHILLIPS
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the strange company of the politically correct assault on the culture of the
past.
CoMMENDATIONS
Love, Again
by Doris Lessing is a subtle, complex and grip–
ping narrative. It is a story within a story of the varieties of love:
unrequited, disastrous, suffering, and wistful. The central characters are a
dead woman, a mulatto, the victim of racially denied fulfillment of love,
and a woman widowed some years ago, and now doomed to love again.
The novel tolls all the bells of possible and imaginary love.
Gerald Holton's new book about science,
Einstein: History and Other
Passions
(Addison-Wesley), is divided into two parts: the first is a tribute to
the achievement of science in Western civilization; the second is an
acknowledgment of Einstein's outstanding scientific achievements and his
dedication to the values of scientific thought. It is a refreshing antidote to
the current assaults on the very idea of scientific truth and of the impor–
tance of science in the development of the West.
Roger Shattuck's excellent book,
Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus
to Pornography
(St. Martin's Press), traces the theme through literature, sci–
ence, and technology. His exposition runs from Genesis through Milton,
Dickinson, Goethe, Melville, Camus, and the Marquis de Sade, and from
the early bans on scientific knowledge to the controversies over the atom
bomb and DNA research. He illustrates superbly the tensions between
human curiosity and the consequences of knowing too much, elucidating
the many dilemmas and ambivalences, and avoiding taking easy sides.
DIANA 1RILUNG
Diana Trilling belonged to the first generation of New York intellectuals.
She contributed very outstanding pieces to
Partisan Review.
Her first major
essay, "Men, Women and Sex," appeared in
Partisan Review
in 1950, and
the last, "Goronwy and Others: A Remembrance of England," in 1996.
Diana Trilling was a complex person. She had a magisterial manner.
In the early days, she was a staunch and ardent anti-Communist. This no
longer was uppermost in her work in the last years, but she continued to
be anti-Communist - though she was mostly an adversary of the post–
modern ideologies.
I frequently differed wi th Diana, mos tly on poli tical matters, and occa–
sionally on literary ones. But we remained friends to the end. For, despite
