Keith said: > Hi Ray, > > I'm grateful to you for posting the NYT article "Thinkers in Need of > Publishers" by Rick Perlstein (appended below). I tried to download this > myself but my G-box crashed both times, and then I forgot to return to the > task later. Anyhow, it goes well with my first pot of tea of the day.
Cafe time for me. Back after two rehearsals. > I think Rick Perlstein is dead right where he writes: "Where are all the > public intellectuals? A well- stroked three-wood aimed out my Brooklyn > window could easily hit half a dozen." I'm not so sure that he's right > about his particular examples because I'm not sufficiently au fait with the > American writing scene to identify the anonymous authors he alludes to. The mix of ethnicity and nationalities is pretty awesome here. Especially since the fall of the Soviet Union. > Perlstein also quotes Russell Jacoby where he writes (in his book "The Last > Intellectuals", 1987) that: "A literate, indeed hungry public exists. What > is lacking is the will and ability to address it." Interesting. I suspect that the problem will follow for them as it has for us. On the one hand it is important to keep your "purity" while on the other hand you are supposed to be able to eat and speak well at dinner parties to feed your belly. Such situations gave rise in the 19th century to the terrible reputation of Artists as philanderers, untrustworthy and people who would do anything for the money to buy art supplies including sell their children. Artists and intellectuals were barely above Jews and Gypsies when it came to a bad reputation. When Philip Glass began to copywrite and rent small pieces of music for minimalization in such things as commercials and films, the world accused him of selling out and then said that it proved he wasn't an artist because you were supposed to be able to free ride on artists. The Lakota call that "two-faced." > And I agree with Jacoby, too. The problem here is that (book and magazine) > publishers have become too large and institutionalized to rely on. Indeed, > the more blurbs and recommendations I read on the covers and inside pages > of "intellectual" books, the more wary I am of their contents, and the more > frequently I'm disappointed when I actually read them. There are few that > actually deliver what they claim. That is not the problem of "too large" but "too capitalized" with the issue not being quality but profits as the highest goal. Most Intellectual products have to cook for a couple of generations before they can become accepted enough to be profitable. > > There are two facts of life about intelligence (this is, assuming that we > can agree that there is some sort of ability that we can call intelligence > -- which, of course, many people will disagree with). You have a point. Intellectual products are "local cultural knowledge" as Clifford Geertz makes clear in his classic "Local Knowledge" exploration of "common sense." > The first is that any of us can easily discern those who are less > intelligent than ourselves but cannot possibly gauge those who are roughly > equal in intelligence to ourselves or who are more intelligent. The best > one can do in these circumstances is to say, "M'mm . . . you might be right > . . . I'm willing to be persuaded . . . but let me hear more first." I don't make those kinds of judgments. I decide on things like trust and loyalty, but intelligence is not for me to tell. History defines all of that and makes fools of those who think they "know". > The second fact is that, while in times past intellectuals were > self-publishing and self-selecting (usually by private correspondence), > many intellectuals today (and I'm sure there are many) can't get published > publicly because they haven't been willing or able (for personality > reasons) to go through the hoops of establishing themselves within > institutional set-ups. How did they eat? Melville didn't work at the custom's house because he preferred it to making a living at writing. A lot of Europeans in the 19th century had issues with health, primarily syphilis, that made regular work difficult for them. They often were reduced to working at home and pushing their work as free lancers or like Schumann publishing their own Journals and Magazines. I suspect that a lot of the writing was meant to fix the world to make it better for writers and intellects. I certainly have some of that for myself in today's world. Only in the Socialist systems have such people had jobs doing what they are equipped to do. That is why there was a tremendous outpouring of musical writing in the old Soviet Union. At the very least you had to write something major enough just to get into the Union and get a pension. But most went far beyond that and we are reaping those riches in our own cultural institutions here. The one problem is that we are becoming more Russian in identity and aesthetic and losing the traditional Western European roots that have been a part of this country from the beginning. > Indeed (on this second point), those who have studied children and students > of high ability have often remarked that, because they are invariably have > to be taught by those of distinctly less intelligence for many years, then > they often disguise their abilities for fear of being put down or scorned > in various ways. Most of the time the problem is not more or less intelligence but the fact that the production values of the factory that have been applied to group teaching is inappropriate and we don't teach them individually because it isn't profitable to hire a single teacher to work with a single student. Which is, of course, the way it is done in other less cash value economies. Even Psycho-Analysis works to adapt the individual to the group instruction process. We are a curious reverse on this. We do not teach in groups but make the community as the highest value. On the other hand we demand that each person seek their own vision from the Creator and work out their own path which then must be related to the overall community's good and success in the world. In the European world that is sort of like Baptists but without Jesus. We then extend that community to the entire web of life. To deal with what it means to take a life to eat is a primary intellectual and philosophical issue. English just makes that life an "IT" and eliminates the controversy all together. Only humans are "WE." It must be the case today that there are many > intellectuals who lie low for many years but then, when they have acquired > knowledge and experiences and feel they have something to say, find it > difficult, if not impossible, to get published. Not true. For $100 you can publish anything on the internet at several publishing houses including Barnes and Nobles. > Indeed, this is the reason why I had so much hope for the Internet in its > early years, for here was a publishing medium that was not supervised by > institutionalized intellectuals of only moderately high intelligence. So > far, I've been disappointed most of the time I've searched. Whenever I > discover a site with the possibility of real intellectual clout, such as > <www.edge,org> I also find that the original group has been joined by a > more diffuse circle of those who have high institutional cachet but are not > themselves creative thinkers. Group process is the issue, not the system. You need smarter people in working with groups if you want to facilitate such a group. > Mind you, now that the razzamattaz has gone, maybe the Internet will settle > down into the sort of real discussion medium that I had hoped for. But this > thought leads into another area of difficulty. > > This is that modern times are so complex that the sort of well-rounded > intellectuals of the past don't have sufficient time in the day to become > deeply acquainted with all the important problems around them. They must > perforce remain specialist themselves with only tangential contact with > other intellectual areas -- thus limiting themselves to a smaller audience > than those of the past. That is the same story I told earlier about the evolution of musical styles from simple to slower, more dense but with quicker changes. A problem of density that makes it necessary for the Hero Composer Master to arrive and finish off the form. Like Beethoven in the Hammerklavier Fugue. If the Hero composer or Dictator doesn't arrive then it breaks down into small fiefdoms or power centers as each area has a specialty. But the most common process is for the Hero to arrive. As Freud pointed out, Europeans are more in love with the Orgasmic than the breaking down. Orgasmic individuality in European life is a dishonorable thing. The Romance novel, the great poem are all about the hero going out and saving the world either through death (Jesus, Mohammad, Moses ) or propogation (Odysseus). > This is why I think that the democratic principles of the past must now > give way to a new sort of policy selection and governance. This is an > uncomfortable thought and can easily be labeled as fascist. But then it's > also uncomfortable to remain with the present "democratic" system where, > for example, the most powerful nation on earth, with immense capacities to > do both good and evil, finds itself with a President of hardly more than > average intellectual ability -- if that. I'm not comfortable with that. Democracy is hard but you just have to have the courage and strength to do it. Ray Evans Harrell,
