.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/magazine/15wwln-Q4-t.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&ref=magazine&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
my god, he is truly brilliant. i would literally pay money to see him debate hitchens.
i think we do still have public intellectuals, but they're different now. dumber. media-savvy. michael moore is an example. those old-style public intellectuals like noam chomsky exist only in places like france and egypt (and in egypt they're more private than public).
vidal is like rushdie in that his essays are better than his novels. i read creation, perhaps his most-heralded, and i was already a fan of his nonfiction, ready to embrace and love everything he's ever written, and man, creation sucked. coincidentally, i was at one point travelling through the same part of ancient pakistan as a scene i was reading in the book, and even that failed to provide any frisson.
yes, i just said ancient pakistan.
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