Double Agent The Critic and Society

The Culture Wars of recent decades have produced two kinds of culturalcritics: the academic critic who addresses only professional colleagues and thepublic critic who writes for a cultured yet non-academic audience. How did thisbreach develop, and what, if anything, can be done to repair it? In DoubleAgent, Dickstein follows the tradition of cultural criticism over the last onehundred years. He rereads the work of such scholars and public critics asMatthew Arnold, Walter Pater, I.A. Richards, Lewis Mumford, R.P. Blackmur,Edmund Wilson, Lionel Trilling, Alfred Kazin, and George Orwell,among others. Inessays and books that are themselves considered works of literature, these "menof letters" addressed a larger public, balancing social and literary values,politics and aesthetics. Though marginalized or ignored by academic histories ofcriticism, Dickstein argues, these critics remain relevant to current debatesabout literature, culture, and the university. Through their example, criticismcan engage both scholars and general readers in a common dialogue onculture.

Morris Dickstein is best known for his book on the 1960s, Gates of Eden, which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award and named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review. His essays and reviews have appeared frequently in journals ranging from the Times Book Review and the Times Literary Supplement to Critical Inquiry and Partisan Review. He teaches English and film at Queens College and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he coordinates the American Studies program.