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Short story by an imprisoned writer.

I. The physical basis -- II. The moral basis -- III. Of education -- IV. The power of time -- V. The influences of money -- VI. Custom and tradition -- VII. Women and marriage -- VIII. Aristocracy and democracy -- IX. Society and solityde -- X. Intellectua hygienics -- XI. Trades and professions -- XII. Surroundings. ; Mode of access: Internet.

In the Communist world the intellectuals' dependence on state & party is complete. In Britain, Western Germany, Italy &, particularly, in France the status of the thinker or writer as an individual enjoying a special set of privileges & a special kind of respect is very nearly the same as it was 2 generations ago - except that the intellectuals no longer have the same practical effect on society & gov. The apathy & lack of understanding for things intellectual of which US writers complain may represent some halfway point between the declared hostility to free speculation characteristic of the USSR & the traditional (but increasingly hollow) respect that the public in Western Europe accords, the intellectual's situation in the US presents a kind of paradigm for the whole of industrial society in the 20th cent. The role of the free intellectuals in Europe is sketched beginning with early modern times when the lay thinker & writer began to break the original Church monopoly of intellectual life. By the 18th cent the characteristic European intellectual had been completely converted from a defender & rationalizer of existing institutions into their implacable critic. Never in its history (except perhaps briefly in the '30's & early '40's) did the US conform to this European model. The characteristic young man of brains & promise became a 'mental technician' rather than an intellectual. The American intellectual faces a dubious future. He is obliged to withstand almost irresistable pressures toward conformity to the role of mental technician. He is robbed of both his historic functions; being the ideological bulwark of society & its utopian critic. J. A. Fishman.

In these six essays--delivered on the BBC as the prestigious Reith Lectures--Edward Said addresses the ways in which the intellectual can best serve society in the light of a heavily compromised media and of special interest groups who are protected at the cost of larger community concerns. Said suggests a recasting of the intellectual's vision to resist the lures of power, money, and specialization. In these pieces, Said eloquently illustrates his arguments by drawing on such writers as Antonio Gramsci, Jean-Paul Sartre, Regis Debray, Julien Benda, and Theodore Adorno, and by discussing current events and celebrated figures in the world of science and politics: Robert Oppenheimer, Henry Kissinger, Dan Quayle, Vietnam and the Gulf War. Said sees the modern intellectual as an editor, journalist, academic, or political adviser--in other words, a highly specialized professional--who has moved from a position of independence to an alliance with powerful corporate, institutional, or governmental organizations. He concludes that it is the exile-immigrant, the expatriate, and the amateur who must uphold the traditional role of the intellectual as the voice of integrity and courage, able to speak out against those in power.