HUD HUDSON
This week she has been reading Paul Johnson's
Intellectuals.
What do Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway,
Brecht, Russell, Sartre,
Wilson, Gollancz, and Hellman all have in common? They
were all first-class bastards.
Or so Xerxes learned by reading this terribly-gossipy yet
engrossing and revealing book.
She has seen it in many a used-book store over the years and
finally decided to give it a try.
She's quite pleased that she did and recommends it to you.
Here's Johnson's parting advice from
the final page -- advice that seems to have real bite once
you make it all the way through the volume.
"What conclusions should be drawn? Readers will judge
for themselves.
But I think I detect today a certain public scepticism when
intellectuals
stand up to preach to us, a growing tendency among ordinary
people
to dispute the right of academics, writers, and
philosophers, eminent
though they may be, to tell us how to behave and conduct our
affairs.
The belief seems to be spreading that intellectuals are no
wiser as mentors,
or worthier as exemplars, than the witch doctors or priests
of old.
I share that scepticism. A dozen people picked at
random on the street
are at least as likely to offer sensible views on moral and
political matters
as a cross-section of the intelligentsia. But I would
go further. One of
the principal lessons of our tragic century, which has seen
so many
millions of innocent lives sacrificed in schemes to improve
the lot
of humanity, is -- beware intellectuals. Not merely
should they be kept
well away from the levers of power, they should also be
objects of particular
suspicion when they seek to offer collective advice.
Beware committees,
conferences and leagues of intellectuals. Distrust
public statements
issued from their serried ranks. Discount their
verdicts on political
leaders and important events. For intellectuals, far
from being highly
individualistic and non-conformist people, follow certain
regular patterns
of behaviour. Taken as a group, they are often
ultra-conformist within
the circles formed by those whose approval they seek and
value.
That is what makes them, en masse, so dangerous, for it
enables them
to create climates of opinion and prevailing orthodoxies,
which themselves
often generate irrational and destructive courses of action.
Above all,
we must at all times remember what intellectuals habitually
forget:
that people matter more than concepts and must come first.
The worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of
ideas."
***
Any comments you might have for Xerxes
can be sent to Hud[dot]Hudson[at]wwu[dot]edu.
I will see to it that she receives them.
***
Xerxes' Sophomore Year
Last week Xerxes was reading David Foster Wallace's A
Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
The week before Xerxes was reading Alexander Pope's An Essay
on Man
The week before Xerxes was reading Edgar Lee Masters's Spoon
River Anthology
The week before Xerxes was reading Sara Gruen's Water for
Elephants
The week before Xerxes was reading Zora Neale Hurston's Their
Eyes Were Watching God
The week before Xerxes was reading Ingmar Bergman's Images:
My Life in Film
The week before Xerxes was reading William Trevor's The Story
of Lucy Gault
The week before Xerxes was reading Anonymous's Everyman
The week before Xerxes was reading Eugene Field's Little Boy
Blue
The week before Xerxes was reading David Maine's
Fallen
The week before Xerxes was reading Stephenie Meyers's
Twilight and New Moon
The week before Xerxes was reading Gordy Slack's The Battle
Over the Meaning of Everything
The week before Xerxes was reading Nicole Krauss's The
History of Love
The week before Xerxes was reading Wallace Stevens's Thirteen
Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
The week before Xerxes was reading The Dalai Lama's An Open
Heart
The week before Xerxes was reading William Shakespeare's
Henry IV, Part II
The week before Xerxes was reading William Shakespeare's Henry
IV, Part I
The week before Xerxes was reading William Shakespeare's As You
Like It
The week before Xerxes was reading William Shakespeare's
Antony and Cleopatra
The week before Xerxes was reading William Shakespeare's
Macbeth
The week before Xerxes was reading Jelaluddin Rumi's The
Essential Rumi
The week before Xerxes was reading Harold Bloom's Where Shall
Wisdom Be Found?
The week before Xerxes was reading Anne Fadiman's The Spirit
Catches You and You Fall Down
The week before Xerxes was reading Leo Tolstoy's The Devil
The week before Xerxes was reading Colin McGinn's Shakespeare's
Philosophy
The week before Xerxes was reading Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild
The week before Xerxes was reading Stephen Greenblatt's Will in
the World
The week before Xerxes was reading Martin Buber's I and Thou,
Meetings, and The Way of Man
Xerxes' Freshman Year
The week before Xerxes was reading Allan Chinen's
Once Upon a Midlife
The week before Xerxes was reading G.K. Chesterton's
St Francis of Assisi
The week before Xerxes was
reading Jean Toomer's
Cane
The week before Xerxes was reading
Ikhwān al-Safā's
The Animals' Lawsuit against Humanity
The week before Xerxes was reading Patrick Süskind’s Perfume
The week before Xerxes was reading Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the
Snark
The week before Xerxes was reading John Milton's Paradise Regained
The week before Xerxes was reading Dylan Thomas's The Force that
Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower
The week before Xerxes was reading Stephen Crane's The Blue Hotel
The week before Xerxes was reading Gore Vidal's Creation
The week before Xerxes was reading A.S. Byatt's Possession
The week before Xerxes was reading C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce
The week before Xerxes was reading Mitch Albom's The Five People You
Meet in Heaven
The week before Xerxes was reading Dennis Potter's Blackeyes
The week before Xerxes was reading David Suzuki and Wayne Grady's
Tree: A Life Story
The week before Xerxes was reading James Hogg's Confessions of a
Justified Sinner
The week before Xerxes was reading Alexander Theroux's Theroux
Metaphrastes
The week before Xerxes was reading Mervyn Peake's Titus Alone
The week before Xerxes was reading Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast
The week before Xerxes was reading Mervyn Peake's Titus
Groan
The week before Xerxes was reading Walter de la Mare's
The Three Royal Monkeys
The week before Xerxes was reading John Collier's His Monkey Wife
The week before Xerxes was reading Lois Lowry's The Giver
The week before Xerxes was reading Rudyard Kipling's Mandalay
The week before Xerxes was reading Ralph Helfer's Modoc
The week before Xerxes was reading Stuart McLean's Home
From the Vinyl Cafe
The week before Xerxes was reading Ossie Davis's Purlie Victorious
The week before Xerxes was reading George MacDonald's The Portent
The week before Xerxes was reading Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz &
Guildenstern are Dead
The week before Xerxes was reading Michael Phillips's George MacDonald
- A Biography
The week before Xerxes was reading Christopher Moore's The Stupidest
Angel
The week before Xerxes was reading Gordon Lightfoot's Minstrel of the
Dawn
The week before Xerxes was reading Sun Tzu's The Art of War
The week before Xerxes was reading Robert Graves's I Claudius
The week before Xerxes was reading Philip Ardagh's A House Called
Awful End
The week before Xerxes was reading John Milton's Paradise Lost
The week before Xerxes was reading Mervyn Peake's Mr Pye
The week before Xerxes was reading J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows
The week before Xerxes was reading Riff Raff and Magenta's The Time
Warp
The week before Xerxes was reading William Shakespeare's Timon of
Athens
The week before Xerxes was reading J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion
The week before Xerxes was reading e.e. cummings's anyone lived in a
pretty how town
The week before Xerxes was reading Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici
The week before Xerxes was reading C.S. Lewis's A Preface to Paradise
Lost
The week before Xerxes was reading Stephanie Plowman's The Road
to Sardis
The week before Xerxes was reading Alexander Theroux's Darconville's
Cat
The week before Xerxes was reading Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective
The week before Xerxes was reading T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock
The week before Xerxes was reading Matthew Scully's Dominion
The week before Xerxes was reading Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian
Gray
The week before Xerxes was reading the Prologue in Heaven from
Goethe's Faust
The week before Xerxes was reading Christina Rossetti's Goblin
Market
