Phoenix Intellectuals - Softcover

Paul Johnson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0753825511 ISBN 13: 9780753825518

Publisher: Phoenix, 2007

Synopsis

Do the private practices of intellectuals match the standard of their public principles? how great is their respect for truth? what is their attitude to money? how do they treat their spouses and children - legitimate and illegitimate? how loyal are they to their friends? rousseau, shelley, marx, ibsen, tolstoy, hemingway, bertrand russell, brecht, sartre, edmund wilson, victor gollancz, lillian hellman, cyril connolly, norman mailer, kenneth tynan and many others are put under the spotlight with wit and brilliance, paul johnson exposes these intellectuals, and questions whether ideas should ever be valued more than individuals

About this title

Review

Conservative historian Paul Johnson wears his ideology proudly on his sleeve in this often ruthless dissection of the thinkers and artists who (in his view) have shaped modern Western culture, having replaced some 200 years ago "the old clerisy as the guides and mentors of mankind." Taking on the likes of Karl Marx, Bertrand Russell, Lillian Hellman, and Noam Chomsky in turn, Johnson examines one idol after another and finds them all to have feet of clay. In his account, for instance, Ernest Hemingway emerges as an artistic hero who labored endlessly to forge a literary style unmistakably his own, but also as a deeply flawed man whose concern for the perfect phrase did not carry over to a concern for the women who loved him. Gossipy and sharply opinionated, Johnson's essay in cultural history spares no one.

Does it really matter that Henrik Ibsen was vain and arrogant, that Jean-Paul Sartre was incontinent? In Johnson's view, it does: these all-too-human foibles disqualify them, and other thinkers, from presuming to criticize the shortcomings of society. "Beware intellectuals," he concludes (though, given the subjects of his book, it seems he means intellectuals only of the left). "Not only 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." Whether one agrees or not, Johnson's profiles are frequently amusing and illuminating, as when he suggests that the only proletarian Karl Marx ever knew in person was the poor maid who worked for him for decades and was never paid, except in room and board, for her labors. --Gregory McNamee

About the Author

Paul Johnson was born in 1928. He edited the New Statesman in the 1960s and has written over forty books. His Modern Times, a history of the world from the 1920s to the 1990s, has been translated into more than fifteen languages. As well as a weekly column in the Spectator, he contributes to newspapers all over the world.

Edition details

• Publisher: Phoenix
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0753825511
• ISBN 13: 9780753825518
• Binding: Paperback