Public Intellectuals

Yesterday was Susan Sontag's birthday. The New York intellectual with the pale streak in her hair was born in New York City in 1933, but grew up in Tucson and Los Angeles, graduating from North Hollywood High School at age 15. It's interesting to note when intellectuals become intellectuals, when they self-identify as such. And how do they do it exactly? Does it begin with the black turtleneck? Do they start carrying a copy of Schopenhauer around with them? In 1948, Sontag, then called Susan Rosenblatt, bought her first copy of Partisan Review at a newsstand on Hollywood Boulevard. She was a deep thinker already, but that moment is significant. She was fifteen. When she was 31 she was screen tested by Andy Warhol, and her famous essay "Notes on Camp" appeared. In Partisan Review, of course. When she was 43 she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and given two years to live. They were wrong about her ability to survive. She lived another 28 years, writing 19 more books. At her death, her personal library contained fifteen thousand books, arranged by historical period. Susan Sontag appears four times in A Book of Ages.

Today is the birthday of Benjamin Franklin, the first public intellectual in America and the most famous person of his time. Franklin invented the role of the brainy celebrity, toying with the media of his day, provoking and amusing, pushing Americans towards independence and away from slavery, taking unpopular and untimely stands, inconveniencing people. He drove John Adams nearly mad. He was reckless and calculating. Hard to pin down. He was famously agnostic but he knew how to invoke God to make his adversaries look ridiculous. He was a libertine, an unwed father, a poor parent but full of wise advice on parenting, a wit, a scold, a public-spirited liberal and a famous millionaire. He retired in his early forties, but never really retired. Franklin appears 13 times in A Book of Ages, but the stories about him are so numerous and engaging I could have included him a dozen times more. The thing most appealing about Franklin? He made being old seem glamorous.

Did Not Invent Levis

I just read the obituary of Claude Levi-Strauss, the French anthropologist who died last Friday in Paris. He was 100. Why didn't I include him in the book? Why indeed.

Although he didn't invent Levis (that was a different Levi Strauss entirely) Claude L-S changed the way we thought about humanity by asking questions that sounded fundamental and were. "Who are we? How did we come to be be in this time and place?" Questions which conjure the same thoughts of simultaneity raised by A Book of Ages. If I ever get asked to publish a French edition I might have greater latitude to include the kind of public intellectual they have in France. Not pundits but thinkers. If Letterman were on TV in France, Claude Levi-Strauss would have been a regular guest.