The End of Jewish Intellectualism

Nomadics's recent post pointed me to this. Eighty years to the day, more or less...

Of course, anti-intellectualism is something you face all the time in the land of the pure. The very idea that a book could count for anything in the bigger scheme of things is far too radical an idea. Continuity, novelty, fragmentary insights-as opposed to the unchanging pristine truth of the orthodox and the theorists; all of those things count against the high world.

In the beginning was the deed, not the word. The act, the 'vital act', that cuts through the web of thought.

But...

The withdrawal from the world, the quiet 'interiority' of reading,  the value of 'privateness,' the importance of being alone with one's thoughts, the bright scope of imagination, the emergence of neglected, marginalized voices, the ordinary flawed lives that seem more interesting than the spectacular ones of heroes or saints. The laughter, too, that shatters the confidence of power.

Fiction, with all its meanderings, its false attempts at redemption; art as the illusion of comfort. The image, the book, both must be destroyed, since they are derivative, reflections, "idols" of life, shadows of reality. Why bother with the myriad streams when you can go to the source?

Only the things written down have any gravity to them. The other things are ready to disappear.
---James Salter.

Literature stands opposed to fundamentalism and totalitarianism partly because of its lightness, its reluctance to speak with capital letters, as it were, its desire to only half resolve or bring into focus the complexity of our lives and the world; on the other hand, it creates mistrust amongst political and religious authorities precisely because it is so serious, because it offers an alternative way of looking.

~~~

Yesterday, little r asked me who I would be voting for. She's quite fond of PML (N) because they have a white tiger (I haven't got the heart to tell her that he nearly died from exhaustion yesterday). She asked me who I'd be voting for. Like Richard Pryor, "none of the above" but before I could answer she prompted me: "the Taleban?"

Yeah, maybe.

"But they say 'No' to television, to Barney and to chicken & rice."

She looked quizzical. Yes, my work here was done. Already she knows Adam Smith was friends with David Hume and she knows that the word 'equilibrium' is associated with 'economics'. The books, the books and friendship and other small things will survive. I don't know how, but they will.