To Be an Intellectual

Kipps and Belsey, p.89

"Is that what it's like, wondered Kiki, to be an intellectual?"

Recently, I've felt like my brain is melting. Last year I spent hours a day digesting information about Queen Elizabeth and trying to say something smart about it. After my thesis defense, I felt like I had just barely survived, but I also emerged with the sense that I had managed to hold my own in that room. I even got the idea somewhere along the way that I would try to publish part of my thesis. Then I talked to a professor about the publishing process. She was extremely encouraging, but after mulling over her advice for a few days, I realized I had missed the mark entirely with my thesis. The thesis in and of itself was okay, but if I wanted to write something publishable, I'd have to start from scratch because what I wrote isn't the sort of thing that gets published these days. Ever since that realization, I've started to feel like I'll always be a wannabe intellectual. And in my mind, it doesn't help that I spend my days trying to teach teenagers how to multiply fractions and the difference between a noun and an adverb, rather than studying and teaching literature.

I bring all of this up because as I read about Howard and Monte Kipps, Kiki and Zora, I can't help but wonder what it means to be an intellectual. Smith has set up interesting relationships between Howard, the liberal intellectual who fights philistines and hates what the rest of us call great art, and Monte Kipps, who seems to write for the masses rather than the elite and enjoys success because of it. Then there is the pretentious Zora, who wants to be an intellectual but isn't quite there yet, along with Kiki, who refuses to be an intellectual by refusing to give her opinion on Claire Malcolm's poetry. If I can’t be the intellectual, I'd like to think I'm like Kiki, but I'm probably more like Zora. Based on Smith's characterization, I have to admit that I'd like to be in the same class as someone like Howard, but at the same time I can't stand the guy. What a jerk and how self-absorbed can you be? So the obvious question would be, is Howard's elitism intellectualism? And does being smart and well-read make you an intellectual, or is there more to it?

But I think Smith is posing more questions than that. Clearly, she's also asking questions about what each of us see when we see black skin, as well as questions about what constitutes love. Between Carl, Zora, Levi, Kiki, Michael Kipps, and the Haitian jewelry salesman, Smith has presented and challenged several stereotypes about blackness. Levi could be the gangster except that his dad's a professor and he comes from Wellington. And I don't think it's accidental that Smith has Howard use the word "noble" to describe Michael (33) and then later he lumps Michael in with the philistines of the world (38). But these characterizations don’t seem to say as much about what it means to be black as what blackness means to me the individual reader. Smith’s panorama of personalities leads me to consider my own assumptions and biases. Whereas, I believe Forster's Howards End deals with issues of class, On Beauty seems to add to the issue of class, the wrinkle of race. Or perhaps she presents a new discussion about race, with the wrinkle of class added in.

I can see the same sort of thing going on with love and relationships. There's Kiki and Howard's relationship, which has been damaged by Howard's indiscretion and then sort of rebuilt with Kiki’s forgiveness. And there's Jerome and Victoria's short lived love, as well as, Claire Malcolm and Warren's recent marriage. Anyway, comparisons are obviously my thing. At any rate, I'm enjoying this book. I suppose that in some sense it has convinced me that I'm really not up to being an academic and don't really want to be even as it seems to glamorize such a lifestyle, making me want it all the more.