Adam Kirsch – författare

A great critic’s quarrels with himself and others, as revealed in his correspondenceIn the mid-twentieth century, Lionel Trilling was America’s most respected literary critic. His powerful and subtle essays inspired readers to think about how literature shapes our politics, our culture, and our selves. His 1950 collection, The Liberal Imagination, sold more than 100,000 copies, epitomizing a time that has been called the age of criticism.To his New York intellectual peers, Trilling could seem reserved and circumspect. But in his selected letters, Trilling is revealed in all his variousness and complexity. We witness his ardent courtship of Diana Trilling, who would become an eminent intellectual in her own right; his alternately affectionate and contentious rapport with former students such as Allen Ginsberg and Norman Podhoretz; the complicated politics of Partisan Review and other fabled magazines of the period; and Trilling’s relationships with other leading writers of the period, including Saul Bellow, Edmund Wilson, and Norman Mailer.In Life in Culture, edited by Adam Kirsch, Trilling’s letters add up to an intimate portrait of a great critic, and of America’s intellectual journey from the political passions of the 1930s to the cultural conflicts of the 1960s and beyond.

In these moving and meditative poems, Adam Kirsch shows how the experiences and recognitions of early life continue to shape us into adulthood. Richly evoking a 1980s childhood in Los Angeles, Kirsch uses Gen X landmarks—from Devo to Atari to the Challenger disaster—to tell a story of emotional and artistic coming of age, exploring universal questions of meaning, mortality, and how we become who we are.

Should we welcome the end of humanity?

In this blistering book about the history of an idea, one of our leading critics draws on his dazzling range and calls our attention to a seemingly inconceivable topic that is being seriously discussed: that the end of humanity’s reign on earth is imminent, and that we should welcome it. Kirsch journeys through literature, philosophy, science, and popular culture, to identify two strands of thinking: Anthropocene antihumanism says that our climate destruction has doomed humanity and we should welcome our extinction, while Transhumanism believes that genetic engineering and artificial intelligence will lead to new forms of life superior to humans.

Kirsch’s introduction of thinkers and writers from Roger Hallam to Jane Bennett, David Benatar to Nick Bostrom, Patricia MacCormack to Ray Kurzweil, Ian McEwan to Richard Powers, will make you see the current moment in a new light. The revolt against humanity has already spread beyond the fringes of the intellectual world, and it can transform politics and society in profound ways—if it hasn’t already.

In the aftermath of October 7, Zionism has increasingly been used by critics of Israel as a term of derision. From university campuses to TikTok and Twitter/X, the term is employed as a self-evident slur that presumes that Zionists are racist and supremacist.

Yet, as Adam Kirsch writes in this groundbreaking essay, the challenge for Jews today is not merely to counter attempts to distort and corrupt the meaning and origins of Zionism. The Jewish people, he argues, do not need to defend the term – they need to reclaim it.

The Z Word reckons with the current trajectory of a people: in an age in which Jewish existence is under threat, the promise of Zionism is essential.

Liberties, a Journal of Culture and Politics, is essential reading for those engaged in the cultural and political issues of our time. In this edition of Liberties: Carissa Veliz — The Technology of Bullshit; Adam Kirsch — LiteratureGPT; Ryan Ruby — Reading and Time; Michael Walzer — Notes on A Dangerous Mistake; Reuel Marc Gerecht — Saudi Arabia: The Chimera of a Grand Alliance; David A. Bell — The Anti-Liberal; Emily Ogden — Dam Nation; Stephen Darwall — Money, Justice, and Effective Altruism; Kian Tajbakhsh — The Problem with Anti-Colonialism: Recovering Albert Memmi; Wendy Gan — Antigone in Hong Kong; Jennie Lightweis-Goff — Concept Creep: A Progressive’s Lament; John Summers — In The Counterlife of Autism; Helen Vendler — Can Poetry Be Abstract?; Celeste Marcus — After Rape: A Guide for the Torment; Leon Wieseltier — On Savagery and Solidarity; and, poetry by A.E. Stallings and Ange Mlinko. Published quarterly, Liberties, is a collection of the most significant writers today as well as launching the voices of tomorrow.Liberties features serious, independent, stylish, and controversial essays by significant writers and introduces the next generation of writers and poets to inspire and impact the intellectual and creative lifeblood of today’s culture and politics. Nobel Prize winners, leading scholars, well-known fiction and non-fiction writers, rising talents, and poets from around the world are part Liberties journal.There’s a reason why engaged citizens, cultural warriors, political leaders, opinion makers, and activists from across the cultural and political spectrum read and cherish Liberties.