Tony Judt: Zinging from the Dead
The late Tony Judt gets some space at the New York Times op-ed page to ruminate on what makes New York great. It’s all been said before, by Judt and others, and will be said again, I’m sure. It’s Judt’s parting shot to the old intellectual elite of New York—many of whom are still kicking around—that I find most fascinating, and fascinating because it’s true:
The intellectual gangs of New York have folded their knives and gone home to the suburbs—or else they fight it out in academic departments to the utter indifference of the rest of humanity. The same, of course, is true of the self-referential squabbles of the cultural elites of Russia or Argentina. But that is one reason neither Moscow nor Buenos Aires matters on the world stage. New York intellectuals once did, but most of them have gone the way of Viennese cafe society: they have become a parody of themselves, their institutions and controversies of predominantly local concern.
Ouch.
