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forcing these group ties-for instance, by creating imaginary peers
with whom one can identify as against one's actual peers.
Indeed, American culture constantly outdistances its interpre–
ters. The moguls of Madison Avenue and Hollywood feel alienated
from the avant-garde on the one hand and the "grass roots" on the
other; they are vulnerable both to pressure and to formulae. Bnt
the avant-garde, too, are often subtly frightened by the huge un–
malleability of America, and since understanding is our stock in
trade, we may respond by formulae about "mass culture" at the
price of increasing our own alienation and feelings of oppression.
Paradoxically, many intellectuals have failed to keep up with their
own changing status within America: they have arrived, they count
(among all the other "veto groups" who have an "in" on the
American scene), they are recognized by those representatives of
the lower-middle
cl~
who make use of them as convenient enemies.
At the same time, many of the former enemies of the intellec–
tuals from the upper social strata have succumbed to them: men
in industry and in the popular-culture business, lawyers and doc–
tors, and many other large groups have become bored with their
daily work (in some part, because of the way it has been de–
scribed to them by intellectuals), and are taking up "culture" and
becoming not only patrons but aficionados of art, thus moving into
roles and motivations once delegated to the womenfolk, to "imports"
from Europe, and to a few native highbrows. But neither his new
friends nor his new enemies give the intellectual much feeling of
poise and assurance
For one thing, he fears the shifts in middlebrow taste which
might leave
him
in the position of liking something also liked by
a
New Yorker
or
Harpers
audience. He cannot allow himself to
enjoy what, in the eyes of some perhaps European taste-leader,
might seem vulgar or second-rate; he behaves as
if
his patent to
his status depends more on a widening circle of dislikes than on a
widening circle of sympathies. In my judgment, the intellectual needs
more pleasure and more self-esteem deriving from the activities
of his mind and imagination so that he can stop being afraid of
liking people and cultural objects which do not fit some momentary
critical canon, and stop also fearing the popularization among
America's vastly increasing number of amateur intellectuals of
