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What Are Intellectuals Good For?
Nonfiction. Politics. Literary Criticism. WHAT ARE INTELLECTUALS GOOD FOR? appraises a large gallery of twentieth-century intellectuals, including Randolph Bourne, Dwight Macdonald, Lionel Trilling, Irving Howe, Isaiah Berlin, William F. Buckley Jr., Allan Bloom, Richard Rorty, Stanley Fish, Christopher Lasch, Edward Said, Ellen Willis, and Christopher Hitchens. It also includes two essays on intellectuals and politics and concludes with one on moral consequences of our species cyber-evolution. George Scialabba, a columnist for the Boston Globe and contributor to the Boston Review, Dissent, the American Prospect, and the Nation, is admired by a circle of discerning readers. WHAT ARE INTELLECTUALS GOOD FOR?, his second essay collection, brings his voice to a larger audience. Scott McLemee, the Intellectual Affairs columnist of InsideHigherEd, has contributed a foreword.
252 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2009
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December 23, 2012
I’m grateful for George Scialabba. In this collection, he promotes public intellectuals and exquisite writing. He writes in favor of economic equality and the defense of democracy against corporate and state power. And in the process, he’s introduced me to a couple dozen fascinating thinkers with some of the best nonfiction prose I’ve ever read.
Scialabba better be a stellar writer—an interviewer in The Times Higher Education asks, “So, given a choice, does Scialabba prefer bad writers who are politically congenial or good writers whose politics he dislikes?” Scialabba replied, “I'm going to offer a simplified and peremptory answer. Better good writers with bad politics than bad writers with good politics. The former teach us how to think (and feel and imagine); the latter merely what to think. Knowing how to think is incomparably more important. Unless most people know how to think, there can't be genuine democracy.” (http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk...)
I love this response, but I didn’t at first. It took me a long time of mulling it over before I decided to agree with him. Lots of Scialabba’s insights, like that on good writing, challenged my own ideas, stayed with me, and stimulated new insights. And as a result, I’ve paid closer attention to the presentation of writers—both those with good and bad politics. Bad writing—and bad speaking, by the way—does nothing to advance good ideas and good ideals. In fact, I wonder if some of my educated leftist friends are politically inactive partly because of being repelled or repulsed from bad communicators of leftist ideas.
On the subject of bad writing, Scialabba is most critical of Edward Said’s Orientalism, convincingly arguing that he overreaches his analysis (Scialabba presents considerable evidence against Said’s claims) and that his writing is atrocious (Scialabba provides damning quotes). I haven’t read Orientalism, and very well may choose not to, thanks to Scialabba’s review.
However, I have read Said’s work on Palestine, which is both well written and monumentally important. Scialabba convincingly challenges the political utility of Said’s esoteric literary arguments. But he is way off in his weird and half-assed accusation that Said was exclusively concerned with these arguments without also being politically engaged, when one considers Said’s important role in the cause to liberate Palestine. Indeed, in an excellent online discussion hosted by Crooked Timber (http://crookedtimber.org/category/geo...), Michael Berube rightfully argues:
“It is simply implausible to accuse Edward Said of evading real politics…And so Scialabba does not throw that pitch; instead, he sets, winds up, delivers …and stops himself at the last moment, admitting that Said plunged into political debate more than most and leveling the accusation instead at Said’s ‘epigoni.’ They’re the ones who are giving at the office, yet for their lapses Said is apparently to blame. This, I think, is not quite cricket” (13).
This oversight is a glaring one, in part because, in Berube’s words; “one has to be impressed with Scialabba’s uncanny ability to inhabit the books and writers he reviews…But what’s most impressive, I think, is the scrupulous fairness that Scialabba brings to the task of reviewing” (6).
The inhabitance that Berube describes really shines in this collection—you get a sense that at times, Scialabba better understands the ideas of the thinkers he reviews than they do! I also find Scialabba to be incredibly fair, as he is generous to writers with whom he disagrees politically. This even-handedness approaches weakness, as Nicholas Sabloff points out in his review of the book in the Common Review, as his judgments are sometimes modest (all the more so surprising, then, is his diss on Said).
Besides Said, Scialabba reviews a range of intellectuals, from Irving Howe to Christopher Hitchens. As a collection, Scialabba’s reviews and essays create a fascinating discussion of the value and changing position of the public intellectual. He shows us that the historical role of the public intellectual was defined by someone whose “primary training and frame of reference were the humanities, usually literature or philosophy, and that they habitually, even if often implicitly, employed values and ideals derived from the humanities to criticize contemporary politics. They were generalists: they drew, from a generally shared body of culture, principles of general applicability and applied them to facts generally available” (5).
Why literature? Scialabba answers this when he writes, “The beginning of political decency and rationality is to recognize others’ similarity in important respects to oneself; that is, to identify imaginatively. Which is what one does when reading fiction. Literature is, in this sense, practice for civic life” (20-21). Scialabba refers to Lionel Trilling’s point that the “first-order moral virtues” of progressives (like solidarity, compassion, justice) are dangerous without the sort of second-order intellectual moral virtues from literature. He explains that “Literature [can] teach this, perhaps because it has no political designs on us, or because stories get around psychological defenses that often defeat arguments, or because rhythm, harmony, symmetry, and other aesthetic qualities induce a deeper attentiveness” (70). I find this kind of a discussion of the role of the humanities to be fascinating. I’d also like to believe it’s true.
But Scialabba explains to us that the Old Left-style of intellectual described above has largely disappeared, and largely by necessity. First of all, with greater access to more information, it is much more difficult to be a generalist today, (and even more so in the Internet age that arrived shortly after most of these essays). Secondly, intellectuals have become professionalized, snatched up by universities, dependent on institutions for their livelihood, and therefore, also, specialized. Third, as hegemony evolved in the United States and gave rise to a sort of anti-public intellectual—those who are employed to propagandize on behalf of the state or corporations, there also arose the need for the more muckraking fact-finder intellectuals like Chomsky (who by no means is literary!) who nevertheless serve an important function of fighting back against this propaganda. Scialabba soberly notes that this may be an inevitable and even desirable change, and furthermore that there is still a noble value, if different, in the contemporary intellectuals work. He sums it up best here:
“Consider the legacy of such as Stone, Nader, Chomsky, and Cockburn: endless engagements with current deceits causing or threatening immediate suffering to a great many actual people. Unlike earlier public intellectuals, they have not written for the ages, but for present efficacy. And the price, which they have accepted in all seriousness, will be exacted: their writings will not live. But their example will” (18).
An unaffiliated sort of democratic socialist orientation (much of it inherited from the “classic” “Old Left” intellectuals in the tradition of Dissent magazine) informs Scialabba’s reviews of the works of the “old” and “new” intellectuals alike. We come to understand Scialabba’s position that if workers can gain economic power, they can make other needed gains. A dignified economic existence is primary. Like his hero Rorty, he believes that the cultural battles that are largely fought in the academy do nothing to advance the cause of those who suffer most in our country. In his introduction to the book, Scott McLemee sums up Scialabba’s politics:
“Reconciling the skeptical pragmatism of Richard Rorty and the geopolitical worldview of Noam Chomsky is not a simple project…Rarely do you find them treated as two sides of one ideological coin. But that seems like a reasonably accurate description of Scialabba’s sense of the possible. I he were to write a manifesto, it would probably call for more economic equality, the dismantling of the American military industrial complex, and the end of metaphysics” (xiii)!
Scialabba is not delusional about the prospects for American socialism, but he offers a modest call for its continued, dogged, advocacy, and I’ll end with this quote:
“Howe has anxiously but unflinchingly demanded: ‘Can one still specify what the vision of socialism means or should mean?’ After Stalinism and Maoism, it’s obvious what socialism doesn’t mean. Less obviously, perhaps, but just as surely, it doesn’t mean merely the electoral triumph of a socialist party, as Mitterand’s painful experience shows. The only way to answer Howe’s question is to gather up fragments from the tradition—cries of protest and invocations of solidarity, heroic lives and utopian fantasies, analytic strands and programmatic patches-and fuse them imaginatively. The resulting unity will be only temporary; the ideal will need to be re-imagined in every generation. But this is how traditions live” (85).
Scialabba better be a stellar writer—an interviewer in The Times Higher Education asks, “So, given a choice, does Scialabba prefer bad writers who are politically congenial or good writers whose politics he dislikes?” Scialabba replied, “I'm going to offer a simplified and peremptory answer. Better good writers with bad politics than bad writers with good politics. The former teach us how to think (and feel and imagine); the latter merely what to think. Knowing how to think is incomparably more important. Unless most people know how to think, there can't be genuine democracy.” (http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk...)
I love this response, but I didn’t at first. It took me a long time of mulling it over before I decided to agree with him. Lots of Scialabba’s insights, like that on good writing, challenged my own ideas, stayed with me, and stimulated new insights. And as a result, I’ve paid closer attention to the presentation of writers—both those with good and bad politics. Bad writing—and bad speaking, by the way—does nothing to advance good ideas and good ideals. In fact, I wonder if some of my educated leftist friends are politically inactive partly because of being repelled or repulsed from bad communicators of leftist ideas.
On the subject of bad writing, Scialabba is most critical of Edward Said’s Orientalism, convincingly arguing that he overreaches his analysis (Scialabba presents considerable evidence against Said’s claims) and that his writing is atrocious (Scialabba provides damning quotes). I haven’t read Orientalism, and very well may choose not to, thanks to Scialabba’s review.
However, I have read Said’s work on Palestine, which is both well written and monumentally important. Scialabba convincingly challenges the political utility of Said’s esoteric literary arguments. But he is way off in his weird and half-assed accusation that Said was exclusively concerned with these arguments without also being politically engaged, when one considers Said’s important role in the cause to liberate Palestine. Indeed, in an excellent online discussion hosted by Crooked Timber (http://crookedtimber.org/category/geo...), Michael Berube rightfully argues:
“It is simply implausible to accuse Edward Said of evading real politics…And so Scialabba does not throw that pitch; instead, he sets, winds up, delivers …and stops himself at the last moment, admitting that Said plunged into political debate more than most and leveling the accusation instead at Said’s ‘epigoni.’ They’re the ones who are giving at the office, yet for their lapses Said is apparently to blame. This, I think, is not quite cricket” (13).
This oversight is a glaring one, in part because, in Berube’s words; “one has to be impressed with Scialabba’s uncanny ability to inhabit the books and writers he reviews…But what’s most impressive, I think, is the scrupulous fairness that Scialabba brings to the task of reviewing” (6).
The inhabitance that Berube describes really shines in this collection—you get a sense that at times, Scialabba better understands the ideas of the thinkers he reviews than they do! I also find Scialabba to be incredibly fair, as he is generous to writers with whom he disagrees politically. This even-handedness approaches weakness, as Nicholas Sabloff points out in his review of the book in the Common Review, as his judgments are sometimes modest (all the more so surprising, then, is his diss on Said).
Besides Said, Scialabba reviews a range of intellectuals, from Irving Howe to Christopher Hitchens. As a collection, Scialabba’s reviews and essays create a fascinating discussion of the value and changing position of the public intellectual. He shows us that the historical role of the public intellectual was defined by someone whose “primary training and frame of reference were the humanities, usually literature or philosophy, and that they habitually, even if often implicitly, employed values and ideals derived from the humanities to criticize contemporary politics. They were generalists: they drew, from a generally shared body of culture, principles of general applicability and applied them to facts generally available” (5).
Why literature? Scialabba answers this when he writes, “The beginning of political decency and rationality is to recognize others’ similarity in important respects to oneself; that is, to identify imaginatively. Which is what one does when reading fiction. Literature is, in this sense, practice for civic life” (20-21). Scialabba refers to Lionel Trilling’s point that the “first-order moral virtues” of progressives (like solidarity, compassion, justice) are dangerous without the sort of second-order intellectual moral virtues from literature. He explains that “Literature [can] teach this, perhaps because it has no political designs on us, or because stories get around psychological defenses that often defeat arguments, or because rhythm, harmony, symmetry, and other aesthetic qualities induce a deeper attentiveness” (70). I find this kind of a discussion of the role of the humanities to be fascinating. I’d also like to believe it’s true.
But Scialabba explains to us that the Old Left-style of intellectual described above has largely disappeared, and largely by necessity. First of all, with greater access to more information, it is much more difficult to be a generalist today, (and even more so in the Internet age that arrived shortly after most of these essays). Secondly, intellectuals have become professionalized, snatched up by universities, dependent on institutions for their livelihood, and therefore, also, specialized. Third, as hegemony evolved in the United States and gave rise to a sort of anti-public intellectual—those who are employed to propagandize on behalf of the state or corporations, there also arose the need for the more muckraking fact-finder intellectuals like Chomsky (who by no means is literary!) who nevertheless serve an important function of fighting back against this propaganda. Scialabba soberly notes that this may be an inevitable and even desirable change, and furthermore that there is still a noble value, if different, in the contemporary intellectuals work. He sums it up best here:
“Consider the legacy of such as Stone, Nader, Chomsky, and Cockburn: endless engagements with current deceits causing or threatening immediate suffering to a great many actual people. Unlike earlier public intellectuals, they have not written for the ages, but for present efficacy. And the price, which they have accepted in all seriousness, will be exacted: their writings will not live. But their example will” (18).
An unaffiliated sort of democratic socialist orientation (much of it inherited from the “classic” “Old Left” intellectuals in the tradition of Dissent magazine) informs Scialabba’s reviews of the works of the “old” and “new” intellectuals alike. We come to understand Scialabba’s position that if workers can gain economic power, they can make other needed gains. A dignified economic existence is primary. Like his hero Rorty, he believes that the cultural battles that are largely fought in the academy do nothing to advance the cause of those who suffer most in our country. In his introduction to the book, Scott McLemee sums up Scialabba’s politics:
“Reconciling the skeptical pragmatism of Richard Rorty and the geopolitical worldview of Noam Chomsky is not a simple project…Rarely do you find them treated as two sides of one ideological coin. But that seems like a reasonably accurate description of Scialabba’s sense of the possible. I he were to write a manifesto, it would probably call for more economic equality, the dismantling of the American military industrial complex, and the end of metaphysics” (xiii)!
Scialabba is not delusional about the prospects for American socialism, but he offers a modest call for its continued, dogged, advocacy, and I’ll end with this quote:
“Howe has anxiously but unflinchingly demanded: ‘Can one still specify what the vision of socialism means or should mean?’ After Stalinism and Maoism, it’s obvious what socialism doesn’t mean. Less obviously, perhaps, but just as surely, it doesn’t mean merely the electoral triumph of a socialist party, as Mitterand’s painful experience shows. The only way to answer Howe’s question is to gather up fragments from the tradition—cries of protest and invocations of solidarity, heroic lives and utopian fantasies, analytic strands and programmatic patches-and fuse them imaginatively. The resulting unity will be only temporary; the ideal will need to be re-imagined in every generation. But this is how traditions live” (85).
January 19, 2023
I hesitated between 3 and 4 stars for this but had to go with 4 in the end. This book makes for compulsive reading and he's a really wonderful stylist. The quality of the argument is more mixed, but there's definitely plenty of insights in here that are engaging, thought-provoking, informative, helpful, etc, alongside some undercurrents of silliness, perhaps best exemplified by his claim that Rorty is a better philosopher than Plato. I suspect him of being a bit reddit about religion and someone who carries 'religious trauma', but that's more an implicit than explicit part of the book. It's interesting to read someone who has such a different view of the world than I do (more than I expected, I guess), despite definite points of agreement. He really does believe in things like transhumanism and utopia, though of course with many humane qualifications thrown into his approval of those concepts. His intellectual generosity is really remarkable (though it does occasionally fail him) and it's fascinating to watch him navigate his agreements and disagreements with those who are both more to the right of him and those more to the (especially cultural) left of him.
December 10, 2015
Scialabba, the hero of the CrookedTimber crowd, gives his audience what they want as he plays grand surveyor and judge of the cultural critics and theorists: putting them in their place and setting their ideas against a little, but not too much, outside reality. This is a book that grumbles about the limits of the academy from the position of a job inside a university, if not an actual teaching role. When he jeers at Isaiah Berlin for giving an audience what it wants to hear, I can't help thinking that George is equally guilty of pandering to a marketplace that doesn't like poststructuralism and deconstruction, but doesn't want to return to a full-blooded Great Books curriculum, so would like an acceptable middleground voice to confirm its taste.
This collection was published in 2009 and already a lot of the concerns (the "battle of the books", Clinton and Gingrich and the rest of the 90s) had faded to near-irrelevance. Allan Bloom and Stanley Fish are important people in this selection. Christopher Hitchens gets a take-down for his endorsement of the War On Terror (the most recent concern in the book) and it's good but not quite up to the standard of the definitive Hitchens critique, by Stefan Collini. Collini is an academic cultural historian, and the difference in resources shows up the generalist Scialabba. On the other hand Collini is too respectful of Isaiah Berlin, and George does a decent paint-job on that particular hollow idol, though he seems unaware he had right-wing challengers as well (Roger Scruton, for example).
Scialabba's real passion seems located even further back than the 80s, it's for the old New York intelligentsia, all those working class Jewish boys who put themselves through City College and got to be big name lecturers invited to the top schools. Irving Howe, Sidney Hook... this is the source of his respect for the self-taught generalist, which seems to be one of Orwell's main distinctions, that puts him in the holy (and constantly invoked) trinity with Dwight MacDonald and Randolph Bourne. Though of course 2 of those old boys had compararatively well-off upbringings, and one of them went to a top university.
A few months ago I saw a comment on CrookedTimber, in which someone recalled seeing Irving Howe turn up at a left-wing conference in the early 90s and talk about nothing but Stalinism, and how it had deceived his generation, boring everyone else present with his windy irrelevance. There's a danger George himself could end up that way. He does note in passing that the elite schools of American higher education are completely unlike the majority beneath them, all the many small liberal arts colleges and city colleges, the places where some of his heroes started out. That might be the most topical point in the book, and we shouldn't worry too much about what's happening at Yale or Brown when the real movement of tomorrow is incubating in Baton Rouge. Of course all those great New Yorkers were playing at mimicking their own heroes, far away in Paris and Berlin and Moscow, but with the advantage that their home city wasn't in the battlefields. It's easier to think about history if it isn't happening too close by.
This collection was published in 2009 and already a lot of the concerns (the "battle of the books", Clinton and Gingrich and the rest of the 90s) had faded to near-irrelevance. Allan Bloom and Stanley Fish are important people in this selection. Christopher Hitchens gets a take-down for his endorsement of the War On Terror (the most recent concern in the book) and it's good but not quite up to the standard of the definitive Hitchens critique, by Stefan Collini. Collini is an academic cultural historian, and the difference in resources shows up the generalist Scialabba. On the other hand Collini is too respectful of Isaiah Berlin, and George does a decent paint-job on that particular hollow idol, though he seems unaware he had right-wing challengers as well (Roger Scruton, for example).
Scialabba's real passion seems located even further back than the 80s, it's for the old New York intelligentsia, all those working class Jewish boys who put themselves through City College and got to be big name lecturers invited to the top schools. Irving Howe, Sidney Hook... this is the source of his respect for the self-taught generalist, which seems to be one of Orwell's main distinctions, that puts him in the holy (and constantly invoked) trinity with Dwight MacDonald and Randolph Bourne. Though of course 2 of those old boys had compararatively well-off upbringings, and one of them went to a top university.
A few months ago I saw a comment on CrookedTimber, in which someone recalled seeing Irving Howe turn up at a left-wing conference in the early 90s and talk about nothing but Stalinism, and how it had deceived his generation, boring everyone else present with his windy irrelevance. There's a danger George himself could end up that way. He does note in passing that the elite schools of American higher education are completely unlike the majority beneath them, all the many small liberal arts colleges and city colleges, the places where some of his heroes started out. That might be the most topical point in the book, and we shouldn't worry too much about what's happening at Yale or Brown when the real movement of tomorrow is incubating in Baton Rouge. Of course all those great New Yorkers were playing at mimicking their own heroes, far away in Paris and Berlin and Moscow, but with the advantage that their home city wasn't in the battlefields. It's easier to think about history if it isn't happening too close by.
January 24, 2024
I first encountered this book 15 years ago, when I participated in an online forum discussing George Scialabba's criticism and ideas. Two crucial essays on this book dealt with Christopher Lasch, a historian of great intellectual importance to be and to Scialabba also, which is how I got involved in the discussion. I went back recently and finished the book, and found plenty of evidence in support of Scialabba's awesome--is peculiar and limited--reputation. As a completely committed progressive liberal, he reads conservative writers and activists--William F. Buckley, Allan Bloom--as well as the philosophers and historians many of them draw upon--Isaiah Berlin, Alasdair MacIntyre--with a wit and a sympathetic, yet critical, insight that is almost unknown amongst other liberal and left-leaning intellectuals today. I'm not sure Scialabba is entirely persuasive in the way he situates the intellectual task of the critical reader today, but as someone who practices it, he is nearly without peer.
August 7, 2019
I expected this to be a book-length attempt answering the title question, but that's confined to one essay at the start, which was a bit disappointing.
Scialabba's breadth of reading and coherent moral framework (which I largely share) make him a trustworthy companion in reading the intellectuals he profiles. Unfortunately, I've only read a small fraction of them; I'm sure I'd have gotten more out of the book if I was already more familiar with the subjects.
Scialabba's breadth of reading and coherent moral framework (which I largely share) make him a trustworthy companion in reading the intellectuals he profiles. Unfortunately, I've only read a small fraction of them; I'm sure I'd have gotten more out of the book if I was already more familiar with the subjects.
July 17, 2009
Reading this book is like taking a short course not only in the work of the most important contemporary intellectuals, but in the Western philosophical and literary canon itself. Scialabba might be the best book critic in the country right now, and his writing exemplifies the power of clear and finely wrought prose. I hope to be able to write half as well about books and ideas before I die.
February 28, 2024
AMONG THE ADVANTAGES of retirement is getting around to the years’ worth (decades’ worth?) of books that I have been wanting to read but had no immediate, pressing need to read, such as this collection of articles and reviews by George Scialabba.
I figured the book was a good bet because I have been enjoying Scialabba’s reviews for years—always crisply written, well-informed, and thought-provoking.
The earliest collected here is a piece on Leszek Kolakowski, Richard Rorty, and Alasdair MacIntyre that appeared in the Village Voice in 1983, the most recent a valedictory piece on Christopher Hitchens that appeared in n+1 in 2005–that is, a farewell not to Hitchens the person, who died in 2011, but to Hitchens the writer one looks forward to reading, given his support of the war in Iraq. (Hitchens was still alive when this collection was published in 2009.)
I am on Scialabba’s wavelength in several ways. I have a wide, deep soft spot for the New York intellectuals of the post-WW II era, and so does he; the deeply appreciative piece on Dwight MacDonald was a highlight of the book for me, and I also relished those on Lionel Trilling and Irving Howe. Though not a conservative, I am always interested in what an intelligent and articulate argument for conservative ideas looks like, and so is he, hence the serious appraisals here of John Gray, Allan Bloom, and William F. Buckley.
We even dislike some of the same things. When Scialabba calls Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism “an inexhaustibly tiresome book,” all I can say is amen. (I know he’s important—but one can be important and inexhaustibly tiresome in the bargain.)
I don’t like Christopher Lasch as much as Scialabba does, but reading Scialabba makes me think I should like Lasch more than I do. I like Isaiah Berlin a lot more than Scialabba does, but his point about the cold water Berlin throws on any kind of aspirational thinking sounds right. We are of one mind, I was happy to see, on Rorty.
He’s a national treasure, I think. I haven’t seen much by him lately, but I trust he’s still reading and writing.
I figured the book was a good bet because I have been enjoying Scialabba’s reviews for years—always crisply written, well-informed, and thought-provoking.
The earliest collected here is a piece on Leszek Kolakowski, Richard Rorty, and Alasdair MacIntyre that appeared in the Village Voice in 1983, the most recent a valedictory piece on Christopher Hitchens that appeared in n+1 in 2005–that is, a farewell not to Hitchens the person, who died in 2011, but to Hitchens the writer one looks forward to reading, given his support of the war in Iraq. (Hitchens was still alive when this collection was published in 2009.)
I am on Scialabba’s wavelength in several ways. I have a wide, deep soft spot for the New York intellectuals of the post-WW II era, and so does he; the deeply appreciative piece on Dwight MacDonald was a highlight of the book for me, and I also relished those on Lionel Trilling and Irving Howe. Though not a conservative, I am always interested in what an intelligent and articulate argument for conservative ideas looks like, and so is he, hence the serious appraisals here of John Gray, Allan Bloom, and William F. Buckley.
We even dislike some of the same things. When Scialabba calls Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism “an inexhaustibly tiresome book,” all I can say is amen. (I know he’s important—but one can be important and inexhaustibly tiresome in the bargain.)
I don’t like Christopher Lasch as much as Scialabba does, but reading Scialabba makes me think I should like Lasch more than I do. I like Isaiah Berlin a lot more than Scialabba does, but his point about the cold water Berlin throws on any kind of aspirational thinking sounds right. We are of one mind, I was happy to see, on Rorty.
He’s a national treasure, I think. I haven’t seen much by him lately, but I trust he’s still reading and writing.
August 2, 2018
George Scialabba is fascinating because his work really is difficult to characterize. On one hand, he's reviewing books, but his reviews tend to encompass authors and their oeuvres, rather than just solitary works, allowing him to place things in context and give a sense of their lives as a whole. But more importantly, he's interested in the the ideas themselves, and so instead of summarizes is quite happy to argue with, both against and alongside, those he writes about. What this means for his readers is a collection which is fascinating in itself, and serves as a convenient springboard for future reading.
As you read his reviews, a picture starts forming of Scialabba himself. He's a dejected leftist, both because of the loss of credibility for communism in the last century, and because "the people" seem quite happy with their state of affairs for the most part. He thinks there are two paths ahead then, either simply agree with Richard Rorty (one of his heroes) that
or hold out hope for a utopian future, even if it isn't possible in our lifetime or even the next, since a utopian project will require far greater social trust and far better human beings than we can dream of for now. And Scialabba wants to believe in this latter path.
But to recognize that perfection won't arrive for us isn't to yield to the darkness, and he puts forward instead an ideal to strive for - truth telling, no matter how unpopular, no matter how against the grain of our far-too-comfortable-with-mass-production culture. He admits that the people who do this aren't particular successful personally or often for their projects, and yet by exploring the lives and works of people who can be thought to have lived this way, he makes a powerful case for their brand of heroism.
As you read his reviews, a picture starts forming of Scialabba himself. He's a dejected leftist, both because of the loss of credibility for communism in the last century, and because "the people" seem quite happy with their state of affairs for the most part. He thinks there are two paths ahead then, either simply agree with Richard Rorty (one of his heroes) that
we may have to concede to Nietzsche that democratic societies have no higher aim than what he called “the last men”—the people who have “their little pleasures for the day and their little pleasures for the night.”
or hold out hope for a utopian future, even if it isn't possible in our lifetime or even the next, since a utopian project will require far greater social trust and far better human beings than we can dream of for now. And Scialabba wants to believe in this latter path.
But to recognize that perfection won't arrive for us isn't to yield to the darkness, and he puts forward instead an ideal to strive for - truth telling, no matter how unpopular, no matter how against the grain of our far-too-comfortable-with-mass-production culture. He admits that the people who do this aren't particular successful personally or often for their projects, and yet by exploring the lives and works of people who can be thought to have lived this way, he makes a powerful case for their brand of heroism.
February 6, 2023
George, I feel like he would want me to call him George, stands head and shoulders above the vast majority of contemporary literary and social critics. These essays and exemplary in their boldness, clarity, compassion, modesty. He draws out insightful threads throughout all of these essays which are a joy to follow. George's criticism is informative, challenging, nuanced as well as attentive to quality of each others argument and writing. But most importantly - this book is fun as hell to read.
It introduced to a huge number of thinkers who have gone on to make me a more thoughtful person but I still return to George's reviews to put my arms around them, place them in their context, and hear his thoughts prattle around my brain.
I'm so grateful to George. I read everything he writes.
He is one of the good ones.
It introduced to a huge number of thinkers who have gone on to make me a more thoughtful person but I still return to George's reviews to put my arms around them, place them in their context, and hear his thoughts prattle around my brain.
I'm so grateful to George. I read everything he writes.
He is one of the good ones.
May 7, 2017
The topic the book takes up is interesting - what is the role of the 'intellectual', or someone who writes opinion pieces and works in think thanks? However, most of the time is spent lamenting the more central role of generations past and bringing up examples of very specific individuals without putting them in much context.
Probably enjoyable if you know a lot of 20th century essayists and want to contemplate their downfall.
Probably enjoyable if you know a lot of 20th century essayists and want to contemplate their downfall.
February 7, 2018
George Scialabba is a goddamn treasure
February 19, 2024
For someone who loves Orwell so much, why does George speak in such inscrutable linguistic and cultural tones?
August 17, 2021
Indispensable. Scialabba is the best. Love that guy
Want to read
October 17, 2015Want a cold splash in the face of intellectual pessimism? Check out the essay on The New Inquiry entitled How Bad Is It?.
I don't know how I stumbled across it — probably someone on Facebook linked to it, but then the essay sat open in a browser tab for several days, and I lost track of where it came from. First response was head towards #TLDR, but the opening paragraph immediately struck a cord. Well over a decade ago I started pondering the question of whether the astonishing collection of troubles the world is accumulating could result in a collapse of civilization — a new dark ages, essentially. The fall of the United States would obviously be necessary for that to occur, and might even be sufficient, given one's conclusions regarding the fragility of the global economy.
The essay is only provides a taste of that, and actually the three books he cites by Morris Berman are the obvious follow-up. But Schilabba's essay is so clearly and pleasantly written, than I hope to squeeze his book of essays into my over-stuffed reading queue.
Update: D'uh — of course, the person that pointed me to the original essay was Trevor.
I don't know how I stumbled across it — probably someone on Facebook linked to it, but then the essay sat open in a browser tab for several days, and I lost track of where it came from. First response was head towards #TLDR, but the opening paragraph immediately struck a cord. Well over a decade ago I started pondering the question of whether the astonishing collection of troubles the world is accumulating could result in a collapse of civilization — a new dark ages, essentially. The fall of the United States would obviously be necessary for that to occur, and might even be sufficient, given one's conclusions regarding the fragility of the global economy.
The essay is only provides a taste of that, and actually the three books he cites by Morris Berman are the obvious follow-up. But Schilabba's essay is so clearly and pleasantly written, than I hope to squeeze his book of essays into my over-stuffed reading queue.
Update: D'uh — of course, the person that pointed me to the original essay was Trevor.
August 9, 2022
Good
George Scaialabba in one better left a liberal writers out there. This a collection of essays on the history of public intellectuals and he laments that the public intellectual is going away and is likely to never to return. To Scialabba a be a public intellectual is to have knowledge in many fields and expand the audience's imagination. He cites Randolph Bourne, Dwight MacDonald, Richard Rorty, No am Chomsky, and Christopher Lasch as influences to his thinking. I think his treatment of Richard Rorty is very fair. I will admit I have only read Richard Rorty and Christopher Lasch. Rorty and Lasch I. Scialabba seems to me to be a fair minded critic. Scialabba defends Marx but he just says that Marx was misinterpreted but Scialabba never specifies which parts of Marx's writtings have been misinterepted. He thins the reader will just know. I think more could be done. Overall very good critiques of intellectuals both left and right.
George Scaialabba in one better left a liberal writers out there. This a collection of essays on the history of public intellectuals and he laments that the public intellectual is going away and is likely to never to return. To Scialabba a be a public intellectual is to have knowledge in many fields and expand the audience's imagination. He cites Randolph Bourne, Dwight MacDonald, Richard Rorty, No am Chomsky, and Christopher Lasch as influences to his thinking. I think his treatment of Richard Rorty is very fair. I will admit I have only read Richard Rorty and Christopher Lasch. Rorty and Lasch I. Scialabba seems to me to be a fair minded critic. Scialabba defends Marx but he just says that Marx was misinterpreted but Scialabba never specifies which parts of Marx's writtings have been misinterepted. He thins the reader will just know. I think more could be done. Overall very good critiques of intellectuals both left and right.
April 7, 2010
Well, after slogging through the last half of this book I can't quite say for sure what intellectuals are good for.
Except maybe to think and write books.
Scialabba has a nice style of writing but I think what makes me go "meh" about What Are Intellectuals Good For? is a problem on my end. Many of the essays in this book are book reviews or political criticism - unfortunately, I haven't read the books under consideration and my political acumen is about nil. My lack contributed greatly to my inability to enjoy this book because so much sailed over my head.
Which is a pity because the book was hard to come by for several months. I think a reader who really enjoys political commentary (particularly one with left-leaning politics who comes to this book with knowledge of the authors at hand) will get far more out of the essays than I did.
Except maybe to think and write books.
Scialabba has a nice style of writing but I think what makes me go "meh" about What Are Intellectuals Good For? is a problem on my end. Many of the essays in this book are book reviews or political criticism - unfortunately, I haven't read the books under consideration and my political acumen is about nil. My lack contributed greatly to my inability to enjoy this book because so much sailed over my head.
Which is a pity because the book was hard to come by for several months. I think a reader who really enjoys political commentary (particularly one with left-leaning politics who comes to this book with knowledge of the authors at hand) will get far more out of the essays than I did.
November 27, 2015
Scialabba chronicles and mourns the passage of the so-called public intellectuals of the midcentury Partisan Review, speculating on why we no longer have writers with such sweeping grasp of so much cultural territory. I wished he'd pressed further on why this sort of sweeping authority now longer seems to work (his quick answer is that every field has gotten more complex and specialized) and why it matters that our most prominent voices are no longer independent but employed by major media or academic institutions. (Would David Brooks, Ta-Nehisi Coates, or Marilynne Robinson sound significantly different if they were freelance instead of salaried?) These essays are unapologetically brainy, a moderate pleasure in an age when there's pressure to coat everything in faux-populism.
June 7, 2015
A collection of joyful, life-affirming, nuanced and smart essays from a deeply humane writer. The writer is like a movie critic, but for political theory, making this a great intro to a set of political theories. It got me excited to dive into Isaiah Berlin and Christopher Lasch again. It exemplified the Left Conservative outlook - against hierarchy and exclusion, disturbed by rampant capitalism, but devoted to old virtues like community and virtue and craft - that deserves to have a louder voice today. Only resisting a five star review because it gets esoteric at times and won't be good for someone just getting started in contemporary political thought - a bit of background is necessary.
January 4, 2010
George Scialabba's essay collection, What Are Intellectuals Good For? is outwardly a lament for the civic culture and the late great public intellectuals. But it more truly a modern model of wondrously civilized dedication to the ecstatic discipline of ideas. Listen to our conversation.
June 24, 2012
Lucid, intelligent, and fair-minded essays from a critic who sees himself in the tradition of the New York Intellectuals. Yet he's also aware that these writers had their limitations, so he recommends the work of a number of great writers outside that tradition: Richard Rorty, Christopher Lasch, Noam Chomsky, Pasolini, etc. A challenging yet deeply pleasurable collection of book reviews.
November 7, 2010
Introduced me to a field I thought I'd exhausted with The Nation & similar mags. Political and social philosophy criticism from a rad-left yet sane position.
Wonderful to see Said dealt with properly. And how have I missed Christopher Lasch?! Or Ellen Willis?!
Guess who's next!
Wonderful to see Said dealt with properly. And how have I missed Christopher Lasch?! Or Ellen Willis?!
Guess who's next!
Want to read
July 16, 2011I'd never heard of this guy, but came across beguiling review in Logos (a mag I'd never heard of either -- a two-fer day of fine discoveries).
http://logosjournal.com/2011/george-s...
http://logosjournal.com/2011/george-s...
Want to read
May 7, 2009Looking forward to reading this book after hearing the NPR interview about the book and its author.
Want to read
June 6, 2009Saw this in AGNI online as linked from aldaily.com (http://www.bu.edu/agni/reviews/online...). Looks good.
August 3, 2009
Electrifying.
January 26, 2010
A promising start, but I didn't have time to really get into it. Hope I'll come back to this at a later date.
April 29, 2011
Not only is this book amazing, it will point you towards some of the best reading of your life.
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