Arguing the World : The New York Intellectuals in Their Own Words

Rating:
Summary: Fine Intellectual Oral History
Review: Dorman has taken his fascinating documentary film about the "New York intellectuals", added new material and turned it into this book. Forcing the subjects of the film to actually talk about their ideas in simple sentences makes them frequently more comprehensible and accessible than the sometimes abstuse books they write. Dorman is surprisingly sympathetic to neoconservative godfather Irving Kristol, treating him with the same respect as the other three subjects ("surprising" because like here talking with Irving Howe, he is usually denounced by the left as a traitor and "spokesman for corporate interests.") The book has an elegiac last chapter lamenting the decline of the "public intellectuals." Academia has degenerated into a group obsessed with left-wing theory and jargon: one critic says "You notice immediately they can't write, amd notice gradually they can't think either." Public intellectuals who still believe that truth can be recovered, that actually believe in the possibility of objectivity, and disinterestedness as a virtue are a vanishing breed in the age of spin and deconstruction. Get ahold of this book and find out what they were like.

Rating:
Summary: Fine Intellectual Oral History
Review: Dorman has taken his fascinating documentary film about the "New York intellectuals", added new material and turned it into this book. Forcing the subjects of the film to actually talk about their ideas in simple sentences makes them frequently more comprehensible and accessible than the sometimes abstuse books they write. Dorman is surprisingly sympathetic to neoconservative godfather Irving Kristol, treating him with the same respect as the other three subjects ("surprising" because like here talking with Irving Howe, he is usually denounced by the left as a traitor and "spokesman for corporate interests.") The book has an elegiac last chapter lamenting the decline of the "public intellectuals." Academia has degenerated into a group obsessed with left-wing theory and jargon: one critic says "You notice immediately they can't write, amd notice gradually they can't think either." Public intellectuals who still believe that truth can be recovered, that actually believe in the possibility of objectivity, and disinterestedness as a virtue are a vanishing breed in the age of spin and deconstruction. Get ahold of this book and find out what they were like.

Rating:
Summary: Great book from a great movie
Review: This film was a really fascinating view of these 4 guys, and the book manages to expand on the rich material that flew by on film. The voices are vivid and real and compelling, and made me feel like I was a guest at a scintillating dinner party. I read it through in one sitting.