WHEN MEN WERE THE ONLY MODELS WE HAD: My Teachers Barzun, Fadiman, Trilling

As part of the Personal Takes series, in which critics "write about the persistent hold" of certain literary figures on their imaginations, noted feminist literary critic Heilbrun (who also writes mysteries as Amanda Cross) contemplates how three men shaped her idea of herself as an intellectual. To a younger generation, all three of Heilbrun's mentors—Jacques Barzun, Clifton Fadiman and Lionel Trilling—might need identification, though they once loomed over the American literary and academic scene. Their example showed the young Heilbrun how a public life of the mind might be lived. That none of them believed that women were capable of living this life might seem to disqualify them as useful models for an ambitious young female graduate student, but Heilbrun maintains that their basic misogyny saved her from too slavish imitation. Two of the three were, like Heilbrun, Jews, at a time when her alma mater, Columbia University, viewed Jews with some alarm. Indeed, the English department denied Fadiman a teaching position because Trilling, his classmate, was the chosen Jew, and one was quite enough. Nevertheless, Trilling could not extrapolate from his experience to comprehend why women and members of other excluded groups might demand change in the bland, gentlemanly face of the Columbia graduate school. Heilbrun is generous in her assessment of the legacy of her mentors; additionally, her recollections of academia in the 1950s and '60s may serve as an explanation of why affirmative admissions to universities were deemed necessary and why they may still serve some purpose. (Nov.)