My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The violent collapse of the ecclesiastical caste precipitated by the French Revolution has given rise to the secular intellectual armed with their scintillating rhetoric and dazzling display of scholastic aptitudes; these social, cultural elites have become guardians of cultures and devised moral and ideological innovations, thus replacing the ancient regime of the priestly caste. Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals lays bare the human frailties of these beneficent intellectuals – ranging from Jean-Jacque Rousseau to Leo Tolstoy, to Henrik Ibsen to Ernest Hemingway, and to Noam Chomsky – and invites us to question the duplicity of these intellectuals that contradicts what they preached for the sake of humanity.
Intellectuals have traditionally proclaimed themselves to be liberals, torch-bearers of fraternity, equality, liberty since they became new potent oracles of societies dictating modes of life and modus operandi of political, social, and cultural systems. However, they are actually bound to the canons of external authority and to the inheritance; that is, the intellectuals are and were by no means free spirits as they profess themselves to be. They are the substitutes for the pagan gods and the elites of Prometheus, who stole the numinous fire for humankind into the bargain under the pretext of shaping our attitudes and institutions and of prescribing us panacea for the social ills.
However, many notable intellectuals who have influenced the arts and shaped our modes of thinking were deficient in rectitude toward their kin, families, friends, and others in their everyday life. To illustrate, Rousseau was an absolute egoist, a brilliant self-publicist, tending to equate hostility to him with hostility to truth and virtue as such. He disdained women of low birth, such as seamstress, chambermaids, and shop girls, while he claimed to love people of all walks of life. In fact, this trait of egoism can be also found in the figure of Percy Bysshe Shelley, a great English poet known for his proclamation that “the poets are unacknowledged legislators of the world.” A sublime egoist with a strong moralizing bent, Shelley assumed that others had to applaud his decisions and when they failed to do so up to his expectation, he was quick to display a sense of outrage. And there was also Ibsen, who changed the social thinking of his generation and that of posterity by preaching the revolt of the individual against the ancient regime of inhibitions and prejudices. He did not want to help others, let alone his own family, for richer he became, the less inclined he was to make any contract with them.
To encapsulate, Intellectuals serves as a literary stethoscope to examine the moral and judgmental credentials of select intellectuals most known to us throughout the modern western history. However, this is not a book to slander their intellectual contributions to the enrichment of culture and society on the whole by revealing their personal history. Rather, it is to show us readers a peril of effaced humanity undermined by the importance of ideas as held by most intellectuals, for ideas – or ideology – were their new gods or new mammon. They put ideas before their families, friends, and people for the sake of perfection of the arts, politics, or society. Moreover, so many intellectuals have jumped on the bandwagon of liberalism in favor of careerism. It is this hypocrisy that Johnson wants to bring to light in Intellectuals. And I think this book is one of the must-haves we should keep on our bookshelves to discern true intellectuals who practice what they preach, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson or George Orwell from those who are no more than learned careerists or demagogues or just talking heads of abstract ideas.
Aura Magoo whose husband owns and operates a seven-eleven type of convenient store nearby stops by at the cafe with her new friend Bonnie Poodle, who is opening a new French bistro at the end of the month with the trust fund bequeathed to her by her deceased paternal grandmother in France.So Bonnie wants to share her excitement for her impending new entrepreneurship for the first time. Aura, the prettiest lady in the town, is in fact secretly jealousy of Bonnie’s financial and social independence as a single woman because she has to rely on her husband’s (named Zeus) monthly allowances to her for tending household and other expenses. Of course, she would not manifest her true feelings on the outside because she accepts it as a fact of life which she has to bear with smile, now that she has married with three children named “Apollo, Artemis “Mina”, and Hercules “Herk.” All this complex of emotions and feelings while having a bowl of veggie salad and listening to Bonni’s rhapsodizing about her imminent business enterprise is on the brink of manifestation on Aura’s pretty face, but she manages to quell it by forcing herself to turn to the delicacy of the salad with a cup of red tea, her favorite cup of tea.
Mary is taking a repose from her popcorn operation, opting for a Lunchtime Pick-Me-Up Sundae at the prices of $3.00 as a lunch special, instead of a meal set. Mary has a sweet teeth and loves to appreciate quality sweets regardless of calories, for calculation of calories at every eating time is thought ridiculously fastidious to her. After all, every edible element has calories, and just because you live on greens or proteins, it does not guarantee you optimal health, let alone svelte body. As one of the ancient epithets inscribed on the wall of the Oracle of Delphi, “Nothing in Excess” should be Rosetta Key to healthy body, beautiful body, and sound mind. In other words, if you do everything you do in moderation, you will never be led astray.
While having her afternoon pick-me-up, Mary is joined by Brenda Beaver, wife of Randy Beaver, who has just lost a job as a head mechanic at “Troika Auto Body Shop” in the city as the shop went bankrupt three months ago. Thanks to his long years with the shop over ten years, Randy has been receiving his unemployment benefits that go straight to this household which has also been supported by Brenda’s income earned from her cleaning service on request. Randy has been thinking about his and his family’s future seriously but doesn’t let it shown lest he should lose confidence and hope. But his wife Brenda knows it all and understands his pathos, so she acts like she does not know any trouble in the world to keep up with Randy’s confidence as well as hers, for they have Betty and Billy, their apples of the eyes. Since Mary knows Brenda’s present family circumstances, she treats her with a swell luch of homemade-style spaghetti, one of many Mrs. Cook’s signature dishes.
Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh 
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