The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880-1939

by John Carey

Book Overview

In this landmark study, John Carey analyzes the elitest views of some of the most highly respected literary icons of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This book, as defined in his preface, "is... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312098332
• ISBN13: 9780312098339
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 246 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

An Important, Much-Needed Book

This book does an excellent job of showing the links between elitist, obscurantist art, political elitism and the pervasive contempt for popular culture which still infects much of the intelligentsia today. Especially interesting are the sections where Carey shows how much of this arose from panic on the part of many intellectuals at the burgeoning populations in the major Europeans countries. I note that some reviewers regard Carey's documentation of the broad appeal of fascism among pre-WW II intellectuals as a cheap shot rather than a serious point. This is both fallacious and unhistorical. Those who enjoy their literary works might like to forget T.S. Eliot's anti-semitism (which is why After Strange Gods has never been reprinted), or to skate past Ezra Pound's pro-Fascist sympathies. But both were typical of their time. It's understandable that many authors who flourished in those days were anxious, post Auschwitz, to forget a lot of the things they said before 1939; and many of those who like the work of such authors would also like to forget words that praise eugenics and idolize political figures like Mussolini. But such things were said by some of our most respected poets, novelists and thinkers - and it is an injustice to pretend that they were not. The Great Silence on this matter must end. Carey's book is a first step towards explaining why there has been so profound a disconnect over the past hundred years between intellectual elites and the broader reading and thinking public - a disconnect that thinkers in the middle years of the nineteenth century would have found shocking and almost incredible. Let us hope that others will follow in his footsteps.

The Writer As Totalitarian Snob

John Carey's "The Intellectuals and the Masses" is an eye-opening account of the fear and loathing many English writers had for ordinary people during the early days of Modernism. The intellectuals of the time hated and feared the growing power of the newly expanding middle class. Many famous and prominent writers came to dislike democracy and capitalism, because they thought they were losing influence. Carey theorizes that Modernism was invented in order to shut out the common reader of the day; to prove the elite's superiority and to put the upstarts in their places. Wyndham Lewis, a man with an amoral personal life, worshipped Hitler. D.H. Lawrence noted the efficiency of poison gas and imagined a large execution chamber where all the stupid people could be killed. Virginia Woolf sneered at the banality of the conversations she overheard from the women in the lavatory. The Bloomsbury set was especially guilty of the worst class-consciousness.Some writers did battle with their impulses and the intellectual fashions of those years. George Orwell wrote with a minimum on condescension about "the proles" in his early novels and "1984." H.G. Wells seemed to advocate mass extermination of his inferiors in his non-fiction, but in his fiction his imaginative sympathies were usually with the failures and "losers" of the world. James Joyce's masterpiece was "Ulysses", a tribute of sorts to the common man (although written in a Modernist style that made it impossible for the common man to read it.) But on the whole the snobbery of most of the intellectuals of the day was unforgivable. This book is an excellent companion to Modris Eksteins' "Rites of Spring" his cultural history of World War I. Both books argue that Modernism was in part responsible for the horrors of the 20th century, with its ruthless elitism and emotional coldness. Shaw, Pound and Forster dreamed of ridding the world of "superfluous" people; did this make it possible for Hitler and Stalin to actually attempt it? The necessary ideas were in the air. And they still are. Carey notes that, as the masses began to catch up in sophistication, post-modernism and literary theory was invented to create a new elite artistic language for its aristocrtatic initiates to revel in. The Modernist loathing for the mass media of newspapers was replaced by hatred of television and America, the middle-class nation par excellance. (And I would add, they really hate the Internet.) If you want to know why so many celebrities seem so sour and cynical about everything but themselves, read this book.

Does not shirk from its stringent stand

The Intellectuals & The Masses: Pride & Prejudice Among The Literary Intelligentsia, 1880-1939 by John Carey is an informed and informative analysis of the elitist views of respected and influential literary icons during the late 1800's and early 1900's, including H. G. Wells, D. H. Lawrence, G. B. Shaw, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Elliot, and others. A scathing and iconoclastic account attacking the negative side of intellectual views (such as a running thread of contempt for common humanity that allegedly intertwines with the philosophy of Nietzsche and an environment that brought about Adolph Hitler and World War II), The Intellectuals & The Masses does not shirk from its stringent stand or its unflinching scrutiny of smart people's biggest flaws. Highly recommended for academic Philosophy and Literary Criticism reference collections and supplemental reading lists.

"Literary Fascism": "Yes, But We're Not One of Them!"

Scandal about the congress between modernist intellectuals and nazis rubs against our enlightened grain. It's embarrassing to think that, say, Martin Heidegger, an otherwise clever fellow, was a nazi, to boot. What's more embarrassing, though, is to consider that much of the hubris from modernist intellectuals--their loathing of ugliness and poor people and democracy--was driven by the same cultural discontents that fueled the death camps. We have our sacred literary cows--D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Wolfe, E.M. Forster, to name a few. Nietzsche, of course, was their teacher. We don't like to think that these modernist "greats" also harbored mass murder in their hearts. After all, strip malls are not a good thing! Nor are Thomas Kinkade paintings and surburban sprawl--just those things intellectuals really don't care for, still, truth to tell.This is, no doubt, one of the reasons Carey's book strikes a nerve. It hits intellectuals between the eyes, by reminding them that their all-too-contemporary passions, those they still carry in their hearts, murdered millions. It's a Catch 22. You can live with the book, and you can't live without it! It speaks to our condition, today, as much as it speaks about the early 20th century. And it has the power to jar those literary sentimentalists who would wish to stick to the STRUCTURE of LADY CHATTERLY'S LOVER!Stephen Gatlin

A new look on modern thinkers.

A great book. It sheds a whole new light on a number of modern "thinkers". In particular the parrallel between Hitler's writting and that of a number of modern intellectuals is impressive to say the least. Also the book is very accessible and I found it very readable without extensive literary background. This goes to show that John Carey at least makes an effort to be read by the masses! Note also that although the title claims to address 1880-1939, there is a section at the end putting more recent authors into a whole new perspective, which imho is one of the highlights of the book. Literature student should be forced to read it.Please, Mr. Publisher, re-print this book!