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==Neoconservatism==

==Neoconservatism==

While he died too soon to join the [[neoconservative]] movement, Trilling inspired many writers who later became neocons, including [[Irving Kristol]], [[Gertrude Himmelfarb]], and [[Norman Podhoretz]]. Trilling's novel ''The Middle of the Journey'' (1947) contains the ideological dilemmas out of which the [[neoconservative]] movement would grow in the 1970s. One main character is based on his college friend [[Whittaker Chambers]]. The origins of this movement lie in the novel's subject, the break with Communism. Trilling was Jewish, as were many neoconservative intellectuals, but his novel is conspicuous for its lack of Jewish characters.<REF>His generation downplayed their Jewish identity, as shown by Terry A. Cooney, "New York Intellectuals and the Question of Jewish Identity," '' American Jewish History; 1991 80(3):344-360.</ref>The novel's ideological content helps to explain this. Trilling made a stark separation between religious conservatism and the secular liberalism to which he personally adhered. He foresaw the ways in which anticommunism would legitimate both liberalism and conservatism, yet his novel offered no room for its characters to synthesize ethnicity or religion with involvement in the modern world. The absence of Jewish characters allowed Trilling to explore a liberalism uncomplicated by religion or ethnicity. Jewish neoconservatives perpetuated the anti-Communist world of Trilling in 1947, but they discovered within it the possibility of being Jewish, conservative, and modern; hence the complexity of Trilling's relationship to them.<ref> see Kimmage, ''The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers and the Lessons of Anti-Communism'' (2009)</ref>

While he died too soon to join the [[neoconservative]] movement, Trilling inspired many writers who later became neocons, including [[Irving Kristol]], [[Gertrude Himmelfarb]], and [[Norman Podhoretz]]. Kristol reports that Trilling was one of the "two thinkers who had the greatest subsequent impact on my thinking."<ref>The other was Leo Strauss. Irving Kristol, ''Neoconservatism'' (1995) p. 5</ref>  Trilling's novel ''The Middle of the Journey'' (1947) contains the ideological dilemmas out of which the [[neoconservative]] movement would grow in the 1970s. One main character is based on his college friend [[Whittaker Chambers]]. The origins of this movement lie in the novel's subject, the break with Communism. Trilling was Jewish, as were many neoconservative intellectuals, but his novel is conspicuous for its lack of Jewish characters.<REF>His generation downplayed their Jewish identity, as shown by Terry A. Cooney, "New York Intellectuals and the Question of Jewish Identity," '' American Jewish History; 1991 80(3):344-360.</ref>The novel's ideological content helps to explain this. Trilling made a stark separation between religious conservatism and the secular liberalism to which he personally adhered. He foresaw the ways in which anticommunism would legitimate both liberalism and conservatism, yet his novel offered no room for its characters to synthesize ethnicity or religion with involvement in the modern world. The absence of Jewish characters allowed Trilling to explore a liberalism uncomplicated by religion or ethnicity. Jewish neoconservatives perpetuated the anti-Communist world of Trilling in 1947, but they discovered within it the possibility of being Jewish, conservative, and modern; hence the complexity of Trilling's relationship to them.<ref> see Kimmage, ''The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers and the Lessons of Anti-Communism'' (2009)</ref>

==Further reading==

==Further reading==