The Intellectuals and the Powers
Hyneman, Charles S.
"The Intellectuals and the Powers" drowned in the bathtub, apparently as a result of an epileptic seizure, Twain felt a sense of relief, and wrote to his only surviving daughter, Clara: "O, Clara, Clara dear, I am so glad she...
...Historians of science invest little energy in argument about where magic leaves off and science begins...
...I concluded that in many of the essays he was discussing a strip of the knowledgeable, articulate, and influential population that did not include the mine-run lawyers, doctors, engineers, professors, journalists, efficiency experts (who unquestionably are trained for technology, management, research, or public administration) but did include important functionaries of the society not likely to be viewed by themselves or anybody else as especially tuned-in on the sacred or um commonly preoccupied with the fundamental nature of their universe, who too seldomly read a book to be suspected of an urge to write one...
...By all means let us get on with probing study of these important and imperfectly understood people...
...Kelly, et al...
...And yet I cannot help but wish he hadn't...
...He tracked the culprits down to their nesting place and he identified them as the nation's intellectuals...
...When you see "intellectual" in the title of a book you know without looking inside that you are invited to read about people who have their antenna out for information and ideas, engage in subtle and elaborate reasoning, and communicate with other people...
...In part, I suppose, she was irritated by the time-slot granted her--most of the minority reports were heard around 3 A.M...
...He had, after all, always preferred Satan's heroic uncontained energy to God's indifference...
...6.00 [] 1 yr...
...It is my misfortune not to feel that I have been greatly enriched by an attentive reading of this book, but that failure may be due almost wholly to my own deficiencies...
...The attitudes and behaviors which he reports as prevailing among intellectuals generally seem to me, when I check my own observations, to be restricted mainly to a particular occupation or functional sector of society (e.g., characteristic of "literary men and humane publicists," but not characteristic of architects, economists, and natural scientists who are classed as intellectuals for the particular analysis...
...It does, after all, help explain the sudden dearth of good literature from a writer who before 1900 had produced so much...
...the recipients deserved such payments...
...Moreover, the Court said, "termination of aid pending resolution of a controversy over eligibility" would "adversely affect [the recipient's] ability to seek redress from the welfare bureaucracy...
...11.00 I Name Address City...
...This is the way I see it...
...By accusing them of embezzling money, she appealed to her father's mercenary instincts and thus aroused his indignation...
...I shall never be melancholy again, I think...
...Professor Shils summarizes his work in an introduction to this collection...
...I suspect, however, that Senator McGovern and the other men directing the course of the convention were rather glad to have only a small segment of the electorate listening to the angry young lady from NWRO...
...Regular Subscribers" Student orFaculty: | [] 1 yr...
...And while we are finding out these things let us be painfully careful not to overlook Schumpeter's charge that talent plus immunity from responsibility plus innocence of knowledge drawn from firsthand experience breeds an irresistible impulse to shake the body politic until its teeth rattle...
...254), a full two years before the Democratic Convention of 1972...
...The Court, in essence, agreed...
...Rather, she said, the government was requiredto do so...
...They valued the architect who could make a building highly functional for industrial uses and they paid the bill for architecture that brought beauty into the design of commercial and residential structures...
...Shifting from one object of attention to another is not a ground for offense, however, for the essays which make up the book were written at different times for different audiences...
...The Court then goes on to argue that where the termination of welfare is at issue, "due process" requires more than administrative determination of ineligibility...
...But for a man of Clemens' means, this was not extravagant, and there is little reason to believe she was willfully dishonest...
...Judy T y r r e l l R iew...
...Hamlin Hill has certainly brought to light some revealing aspects of Mark Twain's character which are, I suppose, necessary to the total appreciation of a great literary figure...
...one dates from 1938...
...During the period of industrial expansion between the Civil War and the First World War, we are told, iron and steel, coal mining, and the railways were industries where free-booting capitalists ruled and in these empires of the robber barons (unlike the situation in the chemical and agricultural industries) there was no use for intellectuals...
...I think he drops a pile of rubbish to clutter thinking on other occasions when he says that front-runners in the development and diffusion of thought are removed from the category of intellectuals if they share sufConsider The Alternative "Mencken would have enjoyed The Alternative, rm sure...
...This individual was one of a long line of advocates of various minority planks which the Platform Committee, in its wisdom, had not seen fit to adopt as part of the 1972 statement of the Democratic alternative...
...I~t us find out whether novelists who bear their fruit in the grime of New York City or put an ocean between themselves and the miseries of their countrymen write better novels than storytellers who hole up in Mississippi or draw a university paycheck for meeting classes three days a week...
...This is a prime concern but it gets mixed up with another---the wish to give an account of a particular class of practitioners...
...Its "sociological" statement of the "benefits of welfare" reflects, at the very least, a certain insularity from the practical experiences of the United States in this area...
...and indeed, the recipients were entitled to such payments as a matter of fundamental right...
...Then, too, the NWRO resented, as did a number of groups at the convention, what it perceived as the expedient scuttling of its position by prospective candidate McC~vern now that the nomination seemed within his grasp...
...154-95...
...Speaking now no t about the work of Professor Shils especially but about the whole body of literature dealing with "intellectuals," I think perceptive inquiry is greatly hindered by failure to differentiate type and quality of contribution from place or status in the social system...
...C a r l Bode a u t h o r o f Mencken To subscribe or renew just complete the form below and mail today...
...Further, the giant figures of industry and the men who hovered around them designed productive enterprises of grand proportions and intricate relationships that excited the admiration of gaping spectators throughout the world...
...In The Intellectuals and the Powers Professor Shils troubles himself almost not at and Other Essays by Edward Shils University of Chicago $12.50 all with definition, with consequent triable for the reader in my opinion...
...Numerous things can be said about this decision...
...The Court achieved this result in Go/dberg, Commissioner of Social Services of the City of New York v. Kelly, et...
...There is good reason to study the influence of song and music on the value structure and moods of the nation, and there may be good reason for studying the sentiments, life styles, and interrelations of men and women who produce and market country music...
...It is difficult, indeed, to see how welfare has fostered "dignity" or enabled the 20 The Alternative January 1974...
...But the brunt of the speaker's anger was directed at the obtuse failure of the convention and the American people to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Organization's demands...
...Even a beginner's acquaintance with recent literature makes it clear that most writing about people referred to as intellectuals omits from attention all but a small segment of the population that qualifies as highly educated, highly influential, and highly endowed with ability to command response from others...
...protested that this was insufficient...
...The prospect for doing all this will be distinctly brightened if we purge our writing of labored argument designed to prove that most of the people who do intellectual work ought not to be thought of as intellectuals...
...We encounter that magnitude of absurdity in some of the writing about intellectuals (not by Edward Shils, be it said...
...But this was not something the government should do out of charity, or even for vague reasons of "social policy...
...For motives that are still unclear, Clara determined to get rid of Isabel Lyon and her husband, Ralph Ashcroft, who had served as Clemens' business manager for several years...
...I venture to say that his observations are touched with an unusual sensitivity 18 The Alternative January 19.74 throughout, though I see no reason why anyone should trust my judgment on that point...
...For readers who want to know a great deal about the conditions, the interrelationships, the behaviors that Professor Shils reports and muses upon--and who is seldom or never in doubt as to just who is under scrutiny--this book should be of inestimable value...
...The arbitrariness of classification is striking in an essay written especially for this volume (pp...
...xii-xiii): he examines the charge that intellectuals tend to be alienated from their society and finds that this is by no means generally the case...
...But you won't know until you look further whether there will be any mention of holiness preachers, labor union officials, members of the National Academy of Sciences, or writers of detective stories--the brightest of whom, I venture, keep their eyes and ears well honed, devise arguments and propound conclusions that baffle smart people who haven't been initiated into the cult, and sound off eloquently when assured an appropriate audience...
...Probably the only people who witnessed this speech in its entirety were insomniacs and those individuals who, like myself, are so fascinated by national political conventions that they are unable to turn them off no matter how late the hour or bering the subject matter...
...It is not surprising that in The Mysterious Stranger---one of Twain's last works which was compiled posthumously and has recently been revised--Mark Twain creates his own alterego in the form of Satan...
...Accordingly, the state must continue to pay benefits until the controversy is resolved...
...The constitutional challenge cannot be answered by an argument that public assistance benefits are 'a "privilege" and not a ~'right...
...Schumpeter may well have nosed out the crowd who stir up the trouble...
...It required instead, as the petitioners alleged, a "pre-termination evidentiary hearing," including right to counsel and adversary procedures...
...But the bulk of the book is devoted to Twain's family problems which kept him from the humorous writing which had made him famous and for which the public still longed...
...Joseph Schumpeter went on a search for that element in a society that has a natural inclination to generate and nourish hostility against the order that sustains them...
...There are twentythree essays in all...
...the imaginative and perceptive piece of writing and the poet, novelist, or scholar who produced it...
...Clemens hired an accountant to audit his books, and discovered that Isabel had indeed spent approximately $2000 more than was allotted for her own clothes and furnishings...
...The Intellectuals and the Powers There is a story about an Englishman who, rebuked for his sloppy dress, remarked that the purpose of the clothing is to mark the spot where the body can be found...
...the industries dominated by free-booting capitalists "had no use for intellectuals...
...Satan is the Mysterious Stranger who, although he is not utterly malevolent towards mankind, is tragically indifferent to it...
...11.00 [] 2 yrs...
...There is a concern to give an account of great intellectual feats and the men and women who perform them--the thing of beauty and the person who created it...
...We should probably be grateful for this plethora of new information regarding Twain's family skeletons and approaching senility...
...11, Box 360, Bloomington, Indiana 47401 Please enter a new i[ _ _ renewal subscription to The Alternative...
...the absence of that first-hand knowledge of [public affairs] which only actual experience can give" (Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, p. 147...
...Let us find out how much truth there is in the assertion that gifted men and women who are unhamThe Public Policy by Peter Rusthoven Lijb, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Welfare Among the many television delights served up by last year's Democratic National Convention was the appearance of a speaker for the National Welfare Rights Organization...
...Possibly, as Bernard DeVoto maintains, this is the only satisfactory answer Twain can come up with...
...Since welfare was so important a right, due process of law in this case had to mean no removal from the welfare rolls until after a full evidentiary hearing, complete with counsel and adversary procedures, had been conducted, and all avenues of appeal had been exhausted...
...Trouble sets in when attention is fixed on free-lance marketers of literary output, artists who receive no salary checks, denizens of Tin Pan Alley, and others equally uninhibited by intimate knowledge of what Schumpeter called "practical affairs...
...Trouble starts, it seems clear to me, because writing about these "irresponsibles" (Schumpeter again) is governed by a wish to credit the class with contributions a few notches higher on the quality scale than the contributions coming out of the people more intricately involved in the ongoing life of the nation...
...Equally puzzling for me is the tendency to exclude from the intellectual category gifted and influential persons whose contributions are fully as creative as the finest product of those who are credited with intellectual roles...
...6.00 [ [] 3 yrs...
...and in pursuit of these several interests he looks in upon the gifted, trained, and influential stratum in the United States, Europe (especially Great Britain), and several technologically less advanced nations in Asia and Africa...
...Moreover, the Court blandly asserted, "welfare guards against the societal malaise that may flow from a widespread sense of unjustified frustration and insecurity...
...In spite of my effort to maintain close attention, I was uncertain most of the time as to how much of the population was under consideration...
...Her particular speech was distinguished, however, by the unusually high degree of anger and self-righteous fervor with which it was delivered (a none-tooeasy distinction, considering the competition she had in this area...
...In short, the speech was not the kind of plea for "sensitivity" or "appeal to the conscience" that one has come to expect each time social legislation is advanced...
...One wonders how they would react on learning that the idea of "welfare as a right" has already been e n - dorsed and decreed the law of the land by the Supreme Court of the United States...
...They are bound to learn...
...That is as much as you can say for the word "intellectual...
...Hill refers to other unappealing aspects of Mark Twain, such as his peculiar enchantment with fifteen-year-old girls and his sudden losses of temper...
...I do not have a talent for ingesting information that is delivered in giant sweeps...
...Q.E.D...
...An extensive exploration of that literature forces a conclusion that there are about as many different sets of tests for being counted intellectual as there are persons writing on the subject...
...Commissioner Goldberg's antagonists in this action were a group of welfare recipients in New York who were about to be stricken from the rolls after investigation by the welfare beard had determined them to be ineligible for benefits...
...The final chapter of this work offers the consolation that life is only a dream anyway...
...Even when Professor Shils is talking about intellectuals narrowly defined, he runs away from me in two directions...
...The Alternative, e/o The Establishment, R.R...
...Intellectuals are in fact people who wield the power of the spoken and the written word, and one of the touches that distinguish them from others who do the same is the absence of direct responsibility for public affairs," the lack of which responsibility accounts for another distinguishing touch, viz...
...390 U.S...
...I doubt that any has maintained a higher level of objectivity or has challenged and refuted cherished presuppositions and widely-accepted myths with less slippage into dogmatic assertion...
...Finally, the Court argued that this was really in the best interest of the state, since welfare represented part of the "Nation's basic cemmittment . . . to foster the dignity and well-being of all persons within its borders," and could also "bring within the reach of the poor the same opportunities that are available to others to participate meaningfully in the life of the community...
...nine were first printed in the decade immediately preceding their publication in this volume...
...They are different subjects, however...
...Under the circumstances, one cannot blame Twain for switching to condemnations of the human race and of a God that arbitrarily and unjustly rewards evil and punishes good...
...Crushed by family disappointments, perhaps he must tell himself that life is just a dream...
...the creeping and leaping corpus of science and the capacities for minute observation and soaring flights of imagination which find their peaks in men and women we call scientists...
...It was instead a demand that the government cease to deny a basic right to a certain level of welfare payments...
...At other times the author's attention is fixed on a much less numerous group vaguely characterized as "persons with an unusual sensitivity to the sacred, an uncommon reflectiveness about the nature of their universe and the rules which govern their society . . . who, more than the ordinary run of their fellow men, are inquiring [and feel] a need to externalize this quest in oral and written discourse, in poetic or plastic expression, in historical reminiscence or writing, in ritual performance or acts of worship" (p...
...drowned in the bathtub, apparently as a result of an epileptic seizure, Twain felt a sense of relief, and wrote to his only surviving daughter, Clara: "O, Clara, Clara dear, I am so glad she is out of it and safe--safe...
...It was that bad...
...A welfare family of four, she contended, should receive something in excess of $6,000 a year from the federal government...
...C h a r l e s S. Hyneman stated, and a promise to pay all erroneously withheld funds should the individual be determined eligible after all...
...4.50 [] 2 yrs...
...Boundary lines seem to impose few hindrances to inquiry when intellectual output is under scrutiny...
...But even she was not without troubles...
...Only Clara remained...
...I cannot purge myself of the conviction that if the diploma-laden college professors brought to Washington by Franklin D. Roosevelt to trim the sharp edges off of industrial empires were intellectuals (which Professor Shils sees them to be, p. 167), then the men who conceived, built, and managed those empires were intellectuals too...
...Most of the book is concerned with an inclusive group most clearly identified on page 76 as persons "trained for technology, management, research, and public administration...
...Summarizing his summary (pp...
...It would be absurd to argue that country music is the only style of song and tune that contributes to the national character and fraudulent to claim that a study of Nashville and its product is a report on the nation's supply of symphony, string quartet, and mamma's crooning...
...Under the Fourteenth Amendment, states cannot deprive one of property without "due process of law...
...I wouldn't charge fraud but I do charge corruption of common English when the spotlight is turned on gifted people who market their productions of art and thought on a freelance basis and the public is told that these are "the intellectuals" of the nation, not just one branch of a big, big family...
...Welfare benefits, it said, "are a matter of statutory entitlement for persons qualified to receive them...
...At any rate, the Ashcrofts were publicly scandalized, and all mention of either of them was obliterated from Paine's biography...
...This I must conclude if momentous creative achievement and powerful impact on the minds of others are critical tests of intellectual character...
...I haven't given any thought to what the giants of the coal fields had use for, but the men who dominated iron, steel, and the railways had a great respect for the tool and dye makers who produced precision instruments that were novel in conception and things of beauty to the men who operated them...
...And those same Americans would probably have been surprised to hear such an idea advanced in the forum of a national convention of the current majority party...
...I am willing, as reader, to do a good share of the work necessary to establish communication with an author, but it seems to me that throughout this book Professor Shils was considerably less cooperative than he ought to have been...
...another appears not to have been previously printed...
...Failure to make clear who is under examination is a fault of the book in my judgment...
...While welfare in some form has acquired a certain legitimacy in the body politic, most Americans do not view it as a "right" in the traditional sense of that term...
...15.00 [] 3 yrs...
...Welfare, they contended, was a basic property right...
...She had spent these tragic years alternating between rest homes and a singing career, while spending her father's money and showing little gratitude...
...he explores the institutions and the traditions which foster the appearance and development of intellectuals and support intellectual activity in the inclusive fabric of social structure and civil order...
...State Zip College Year or Univ Studies end The Alternative January 1974 19 ficiently in running the country to know what is going on...
...Literary criticism flourishes even though critics disagree as to whether particular pieces ought to be treated as literary productions or interpretative journalism...
...I am not melancholy...
...The board allowed such individuals to request a "fair hearing" after termination of benefits, with provision for judicial review if benefits were not reinpered by entanglement in practical affairs "elicit, guide, and form the expressive dispositions within a society" (Shils, p. 5...
...I think it is a fair statement that no other American scholar has examined the gifted and influential people of the twentieth century in the depth and with the care that mark these essays...
...And I admit that it gives me some dyspeptic chuckles...
...If stand-out operators in these several categories are per se intellectuals, then a study of intellectuals in America can scarcely be differentiated from a study of the highly educated, the influential, and the custodians of prestige and authority...
...Their termination involves state action that adjudicates important rights...
Vol. 7 • January 1974 • No. 4
