[lit-ideas] Betrayal of the Intellectuals
What I tried to convey in my "crack in the Liberty Bell" post, besides portraying a disappointed idealism that will only allow a mushroom cloud to refute it, is the intellectuals' sense of irrelevancy.
Franzen writes about this in his "Why Bother?" essay, which may be his best work. Convinced in his youth of Marxism, he tried to write a social novel that would indict monopoly capitalism and consumer society. Instead he received "sixty reviews in a vacuum." The money, the limo to and from book signings on his media tour, he realized, were his real prize, his consolation prize, "for not mattering anymore."
If intellectuals are betrayers, they are also betrayed. They don't matter to a society organized for its own entertainment. If you think a woman scorned has fury, then imagine some idea-choked bloke with a string of letters after his name ... 

Still screeching to the prior,
Fancy Pants
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