""Once upon a time there were three men who exemplified, without knowing it, my ideal life. All of them became famous as writers, influential thinkers, and public figures. Their names are Clifton Fadiman, Lionel Trilling, and Jacques Barzun. They met in college, they remained aware of one another - as friends or, if less than friends, companions and fellow crusaders on behalf of similar ideals ... Although one of them never knew of my existence, the second ignored it, and the third treated me with formal kindness, without them I would have had no concrete model in my youth of what I wanted to become ... Theirs was the universe in which I wished to have my being."" "With these words, Carolyn Heilbrun begins an account of how a woman, destined to become one of the leading feminist critics of her day as well as one of our most popular mystery novelists, found the models for the life she aspired to in men who neither imagined nor countenanced women as their equals or colleagues. Remembering these three figures as they were when she hung on their printed words and professorial presences, reappraising them now a half century later, Heilbrun vividly evokes what these remarkable individuals had to offer to an admiring young woman who could not acknowledge - and later would not accept - the impossiblity of following in their paths."--Jacket.