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SCIALABBA

                                                   July 15, 2012
                                                   July 26, 2012

"What Are Intellectuals Good For?" (2009)
 by George Scialabba

This is an impressive book--
with a catchy title-- one of      I just caught someone on the train
many following in the wake        eyeing this book surreptitiously--
of Russell Jacoby's notorious     a gray-haired fellow in gray
"The Last Intellectuals".         business clothes, reading "The New
                                  Yorker".
    LAST_INTELLECTUALS


It leads with a pair of essays on the title's
subject-- this small section is called
"Definitions", but that's not quite right...         I considered the phrase
they're more like "Manifestos", albeit               "manifesto maniques", but
sometimes oddly sad and restrained ones:             that's a better descrip-
                                                     tion of what I write.
  o  The essay "What Are Intellectuals Good For?"
     was originally published in 1987,
     and collected in the present volume in 2009.

  o  "The Sealed Envelope", first appeared in
     Agni 39 (1994), then in Scialabba's collection
     "Divided Mind" (2006), and more recently in
     his collection "What Are Intellectuals Good
     For?" (2009)


The book then goes into a
collection of very intelligent
book reviews, covering a set of      George Scialabba seems remarkably erudite,
Scialabba's favorites and foils      deploying so many apropos quotations with
(with the emphasis on favorites)     casual ease that I wonder what system he
largely from among the world of      uses to track them all.  Is he another
left-wing intellectuals.  This is    post-it note man?
what "The New York Review of
Books" might be like, if they                                  TABS
weren't so terrified of Zionists.
                                               Perhaps colored paperclips?
    Scilabba is a very even-handed
    guy, and any side of an issue              Or maybe he's a xerox
    he can lay his hands on is likely          machine guy, with
    to get all due consideration.              manila folders full
                                               of cross-indexed quotes?
    This makes him as difficult to
    comment on as he is impressive
    to read... any thought I have
    about the material is likely to
    already be treated in some form,
    in a way I didn't notice or
    just didn't remember.

    I could do an infinite number of
    iterations of re-writing the
    following nodes, just by
    scribbling a thought, and then
    checking to find where Scialabba
    has already responded to it.



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