comment

Russell Jacoby

The Last Intellectuals: a Reply to

Lynn Garafola

Stray phrases are sometimes more revealing than central points. Lynn
Garafola in her intemperate review of my book calls me a self-proclaimed
leftist. What she means is that I have not been licensed by her circles that
deliver the official proclamations. She is incensed because I lack respect
for their rituals and successes like New Yorker notice. In her list of public
intellectuals I have failed to acknowledge, she includes October editor
Rosalind Krauss, an art critic so well-known that a New Yorker profile (on
someone else) opened with a description of her living room. I like that,
but Im a little puzzled by the reasoning. Is it Krausss living room that
makes her a public intellectual? Or Janet Malcolms description of it in
the New Yorker? Or both?
Garafola, a self-proclaimed critic, tries to deck me with an argument and
her personal Roladex. She believes that history is a one-way street of progress and revolution. Anyone who reflects on what might be lost is guilty
of romanticism and nostalgia; I want to turn back the clock while she
embraces a glorious future. She has learned that material conditions
determine cultural life. To reflect on possibilities and pressures is to
blame the victim. Might (aging) new left professors be wanting in some
respect? They are victims of older intellectuals and a hostile world. The
abattoir of history is an American campus; the victims are university
professors. Their plight is tragic; their efforts heroic.
I stated in my preface: My friends, generation, and self are not the heroes
or victims. I prize a younger left intelligentsia that I believe has surrendered too much. I take as a measuring rod an older generation of intellectuals whose work I often criticize (pp. xiixiii). This inflames many
reviewers who require unadulterated praise or condemnation. What?
Younger intellectuals are not heroes? And older intellectuals have estimable qualities? Garafola writes that I want an intelligentsia in the image
of the New York intellectuals and she scorns my endless romance for
the Sidney Hooks, Norman Podhoretzes, Lionel Trillings. What book did
she read? My chapter New York, Jewish and Other Intellectuals directly
tackles the New York group, and questions their contribution and
radicalism. I ponder why so many of the New York Jewish intellectuals
hastily beat a retreat from radicalism (pp. 8596). I expressly take issue
with their inflated reputations (pp. 10006). Trillings writings are
casual and familiar; Hook has produced no original or coherent
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philosophical work. For all the hoopla, the New York intellectuals are not
theoretically impressive. This does not fit into Garafolas cardboard
world; she cant figure it out. If you criticize younger thinkers, you must
idolize older ones. You are either for usyounger, bright, hip New York
writersor against us. She states that I blame the New Left for the
demise of American intellectual life. She means: I do not simply celebrate
younger left thinkers.
I evaluate public intellectual life, circumscribing my argument in several
ways. With a generational grid, I survey younger thinkers born since 1940
who are products of American experience and schools; I also explicitly
confine myself to writers of non-fictionsocial, political and economic
thinkers. I state emphatically that it is hardly a question of blame or
personal qualities. The proposition of a missing generation does not
malign individuals. It is not a statement about personal integrity or
genius (p. 4). None of this matters to Garafola; she reads critical analysis
as a poison-pen letter. She might argue that my generational categories
make no sense or that I should not restrict myself to non-fiction. She
doesnt bother.
Excluding novelists, visual artists, poets I see few younger social and
political intellectuals with a public profile. Garafola counters with a list
that begins, presumably, with her strongest candidate. She asks us first to
consider Martin Duberman. A professor, he writes drama, cultural history, biography and a weekly newspaper column. Here is a younger
public intellectual! Thats very nice, but Martin Duberman, almost 60 (b.
1930), is hardly a young intellectual. Americans are forever youthful, but
this seems extreme.
Next she nominates Edward Said. I think a reasonable case can be made
for Said as a younger public intellectual, though at 53 (b. 1935) like Christopher Lasch (b. 1932) he may be classified more accurately as part of a
transitional generation. Thoughtfully her third candidate is her husband
(and Saids Columbia University colleague) Eric Foner, an author of
widely read volumes integrating the new history within a radical
framework. Then she proposes black women novelists, Toni Morrison
and Alice Walker. To be sure, superb, but I expressly exclude novelists.
And that brings us back to Rosalind Krauss and her living room. As her
best shots, these miss the building.
Her second tier are names culled from her address book: Richard Kostelanetz, Barbara Ehrenreich, Mike Davis, Elizabeth Kendell, Paul Buhle,
etc. etc. I am pleased she has so many friends, but it does not add up. I
am looking for a generational presence, a series of compelling public
thinkers. Can she seriously believe that the indefatigable Richard Kostelanetz, poet, essayist, artist-of-all-trades, and self-promoter, is a public intellectual, highly visible in her terms? Again I must emphasize: my conclusions are not judgements on the value of these peoples contribution, but
on the relationship to a larger public culture. For instance, I also think
Paul Buhle writes stimulating essays and books, and yes, he founded
Radical America and Cultural Correspondences (two marginal outfits). Does
that make him a public intellectual? I dont think sowhich is also different from blaming him. Ditto for Mike Davis, and others she suggests.
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Even the most talented and most independent cannot flourish in an

environment with little place for independence and talent.
It would be offensive to run over her list and quickly categorize the work
of many individuals. The point is: once those excluded by my categories
are left aside her nominations hardly refute my argument. I have no
reason to pretend things are cut and dry; there is room for argument. A
good case can be made for Barbara Ehrenreich as a younger public intellectual. Nevertheless my book does not rest on several individuals, but on
generalizations about intellectual life. It is not a question of this or that
writer, but the wider cultural geography.
Not only do I miss the individuals, I also miss the key journals: Performing
Arts Journal, The Drama Review, The Advocate, Signs, October, Cineaste, Art in
America, Raritan, etc. etc. This wont wash. These journals have notor
not yetbeen vehicles for younger intellectuals moving from specialized
to larger publics, at least judging from her nominations. The issue is not
the vitality of these periodicals; rather even those trying to be accessible
like In These Times have not spawned a younger public group. She is
pleased that several of her favourite journals attend to culture and gender, reflecting the 60s counter-culture. Splendid, but for my argument
this is neither here nor there. Signs may take up women in culture, film,
revolution or astrology; it is still an academic journal.
Garafola doesnt want a critique of cultural life; she wants praise for her
friends, and a circle of not-so-young left thinkers. They are heroes and
victims. If they have flaws, vulgar psychology and Marxism tell us why:
bad parents and a bad environment. Criticism beyond that smacks of disloyalty; hence I am a self-proclaimed leftist, an outsider lacking awe for
the new methodologies, the sea-change in left thought and other shining advances. Her review reeks of the affronted self-regard of a coterie. I
regret that she failed to address the real issues; I also look forward to reading about her living room in a New Yorker profile (on someone else).
* * * * *
LYNN GARAFOLA REPLIES: Russell Jacobys tirade exemplifies all the worst

qualities of his book: ad hominem attacks, a refusal to engage with ideas,

and an outdated definition of intellectual life. Presented with criticism, he
simply reiterates in a similar tone the misconceptions and personal prejudices that make up much of his book.
With regard to my Roladex, alas I have never met many of the intellectuals I mention. Jacoby, however, knows more about promoting a coterie
than I do. Only friendship with members of the Telos editorial board can
explain one of his loonier notionsthat this obscurantist journal is a
model of intellectual writing for a broad public. Jacobys main problem is
that he mistakes a change in intellectual life for an absence of intellectual
life. Since the 1960s this has come to centre not only on literature and the
social sciences but on the visual and performing arts, popular culture,
and the mass media. At the same time, insights drawn from the study of
race and gender and various post-structuralist methodologies have transformed the content of intellectual writing and the questions behind it. By
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confining himself to social, political and economic thinkers, Jacoby

simply defines contemporary intellectual life out of existence. This is no
substitute for thoughtful analysis.
Of course, the exclusion of creative artists is highly debatable in a book
whose subtitle is American Culture in the Age of Academe. Jacoby
chides me for mentioning Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, but the
novelist Gore Vidal keeps popping up in Jacobys pages, and he is not
above marshalling evidence, when it suits his purpose, from poets and
fiction writers linked to the New York intellectuals.
Jacoby objects to my calling him a self-proclaimed leftist. Actually, I was
giving him the benefit of the doubt. A political chameleon, Jacoby
changes colour with his audience. In New Left Review he trumpets his criticism of Lionel Trilling and the New York intellectuals. But only last
spring, at a National Endowment of the Humanities conference on the
state of the humanities, Jacoby and neo-conservative ideologue Gertrude
Himmelfarb found themselves on the same side, decrying the absence of
scholarship that speaks to a broad public. I dont see the Edmund Wilsons and Lionel Trillings, said Jacoby.1 Note, he didnt ask where are the
Paul Sweezys or C. Wright Millses. But that wouldnt go down well in
todays Washington.

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