- Paperback: 400 pages
- Publisher: Phoenix; New Ed edition (6 April 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1842120395
- ISBN-13: 978-1842120392
- Product Dimensions: 22.4 x 13.8 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 500,217 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Veteran political commentator, scholar and former editor of The New Statesman Paul Johnson has collected all the nasty, cruel and disgusting episodes in the lives of the mighty dead in order to question their "moral and judgmental credentials to give advice to humanity on how to conduct its affairs."
Intellectuals, according to Johnson, often possess a defining set of characteristic traits; they are lying, cheating, hypocritical, megalomaniacs who combine an abstract love of humanity with an exploitative, selfish and cruel treatment of those who were closest to them. Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Brecht, Sartre, Lillian Hellman, Norman Mailer and Kenneth Tynan are put under the spotlight and damned as moral exemplars and truth-tellers while Edmund Wilson, Evelyn Waugh and Orwell provide the necessary foil of intellectual integrity.
This is a voyeuristic, gossip-mongering, ruthless and completely compelling book that leaves a bad taste in the mouth if you consume it at one sitting. Fortunately--since it's a collection of short biographical essays or exposès one can dip in where one likes. Intellectuals is well researched and has the polished concision one might expect from a veteran journalist and scholar. It also has the advantage of dealing with subject matter that is fascinating in itself--the extravagant personalities and spectacular immoralities of some of our most revered figures. Intellectuals doesn't always work as dispassionate intellectual history--for instance the overview of intellectual trends since the 1960s in the final chapter "The Flight of Reason" seems forced--but as a set of exposès it is splendid. --Larry Brown
Product Description
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.
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First Sentence
Over the past two hundred years the influence of intellectuals has grown steadily. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Over the past two hundred years the influence of intellectuals has grown steadily. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I enjoyed his history of 1815 - 1830 very much, so I bought this without much thought, assuming it would show the genesis of certain ideas.
It contains highly critical biographies of some people - Tolstoy, Hemmingway, Sartre, Brecht, and others, and says little about their ideas.
Assuming that they were such bums as described, what point is proven?
Where is a solid definition of what is meant by 'intellectual'? Where is a long list of those who fit and those who don't and why?
How is it shown that the samples chosen for detailed study are randomly selected?
And even if all this be true, once the unproven is discarded, all it says is that some people with very stong convictions tend to let those convictions blind them to truth and to common humanity. Rather tautological.
Entertaining, but poor science.
21 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a short biography of several intellectuals (Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Brecht, Russell, Satre, Gollancz, Hellman, Wilde, Connolly) and a few others (Wilson, Waugh) , specifically seeing if their lives qualified them to say what they said. For example, did Marx know what the conditions of the working man were like? Did Rousseau treat his children well?
This is a good book. Johnson shows, time and again, how some of the people whose ideas most affected the modern age were basing their thinking largely on their own egos and a "creative interpretation" of the evidence.
He defines "intellectual" as someone who effectively rejects the whole of human knowledge to that point and assumes that they can do better. So it is not surprising that the people he surveys are egocentric, deeply troubled, and do not live up to what they preach.
A good quote from the book:
It is a fact, and in some ways a melancholy fact, that massive works of the intellect do not spring from the abstract workings of the brain and the imagination; they are deeply rooted in the personality.
It certainly highlights all the more clearly how distinctive Jesus and his followers were in the history of people with radical ideas, and how little basis there is for accepting so much of the modern worldview.
However, I can't help feeling that Johnson himself falls into some of the traps he highlights in his selection of intellectuals. By having all people who hold fairly similar views, he strengthens the case for anything opposing it, specifically his own.
22 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Knowing something of Shelley, I can say that Johnson's Shelley chapter is valueless as history or biography. Shelley was not faultness, but he was rather admirable, sensitive, generous and kind man, who was loved by people around him, and who had a tragic life. Having read the Holmes biography I can see the distortions and the omissions in Johnson's use of his source. (For example Shelley took his family to Wales after a man was imprisoned for distributing one of Shelley's poems, which Johnson reports. But Johnson does not mention another fact from Holmes: that Shelley sent regular payments, that he could ill afford, to sustain the man throughout his imprisonment, because Johnson wants us to think that that Shelley abandoned the man. But there are many other examples of similar distortions: Johnson's "errors" about Elizabeth Hitchener, the end of his first marriage, the death of his daughter Clara and many other things.
My judgement is that the errors and ommisions can only be the result of Johnson's preparedness to ignore or conceal the truth when the truth doesn't fit the picture he wants to paint.
Johnson _may_ also have referred to the FL Jones Oxford edition of Shelley's letters, but Holmes is very obviously the primary source. A friend who has met Holmes reports that Holmes was quite scathing about Johnson's misuse of his book.
I don't know all that much about the other figures in "Intellectuals", but if a man tries to mislead me about something I do know about, then I tend to doubt what he says about things I don't.
"Dishonesty" and "vindictiveness" are what I condemn about the one chapter of Johnson's book I'm competent to judge. Given that chapter, I wouldn't cite "Intellectuals" as an authority on any matter of fact.
Wheels
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
whose bent mind?
The topic is facile: Find foibles, weaknesses and objectionable behaviors among a select list of writers. Read more
Published 12 months ago by la verite en face
Grotesque Ironies
To me, this is not about politics but about psychology. These ... people all had a nasty shadow side that they tried to compensate for by telling others how to live -- a Jungian... Read more
Published on 4 Jan 2001 by Pieter
good expose of hypocrisy
This is a short biography of several intellectuals (Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Brecht, Russell, Satre, Gollancz, Hellman, Wilde, Connolly) and a few others... Read more
Published on 22 Mar 2000
I would give it Zero stars if I could
First, I'd like to say that every chapter of this book is appaling in its fierce determination to hopelessly weaken the left.
What Mr. Read more
Published on 30 Aug 1999
Dem darn intelectuals!!!
Mister Johnson proply puts dem there satan worshiping fancy book learning intelectuals in there place. Read more
Published on 24 Jun 1999
A scathing look at those would tell us how to live
This book is an entertaining and scathing attack on a group of popular left-leaning intellectuals who are often trotted out by some liberals again and again as symbols of the... Read more
Published on 2 Jun 1999
Important Yet Damaged By A Trite Journalistic Technique
Johnson never quite defines what just exactly an intellectual is, and then seem sto concede that "íntellectuals" are only to be found on the left, and on the... Read more
Published on 30 April 1999
repudiation of independent thought by a devout catholic
Throughout all the reviews of this book,no one has mentioned the most salient motivating factor of Johnson;his devout catholic faith! Read more
Published on 18 April 1999
Gossipy, entertaining and informative
This book is an eye-opener, although I doubt it should have been called "Intellectuals." Many of the subjects aren't. Read more
Published on 3 April 1999
ad hominem, sure
In my humble opinion, when discussing politics or ideology, ad hominem is the way to go. Ideas are never the real issue there, even when they appear to be. Read more
Published on 30 Mar 1999
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