SOURCE: “Diana Trilling,” in Publishers Weekly, November 1, 1993, pp. 53-54.

In the following interview, Trilling discusses reviews ofThe Beginning of the Journey, as well as her relationships with her publisher and editor and her writing method.

Diana Trilling, at 88, is not exactly slowing down. She is almost blind now and moves a little stiffly, but her mind is razor-sharp as ever, her opinions are firmly held and often crusty, and her writing style—as anyone who has read The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling will recognize—remains a model of balanced lucidity.

She receives PW in the spacious ground-floor apartment near Columbia University in New York, where she has lived for nearly 40 years and which she shared for nearly half of that time with her husband Lionel. He was, of course, a noted critic, one of Columbia's most celebrated professors, and her...