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PARTISAN REVIEW
much less easily formulated. These new groups want an interpreta–
tion of the world; they want, or rather might be prepared to want,
a more satisfying life.
It is the unsatisfying quality of life as they find it in America
that mostly feeds the discontent of the discontented classes. Their
wealth, their partial access to education and fuller exposure to the
mass media-indeed, their possession of many of the insignia they
have been taught to associate with the good life- these leave them
restless,
ill
at ease in Zion. They must continually seek for reasons
explaining their unrest-and the reasons developed by intellectuals
for the benefit of previous proletariats are of course quite irrelevant.
Is it conceivable that the intellectuals, rather than their enemies,
can have a share in providing new interpretations and in dissipating,
through creative leadership, some of the resentment of the discon–
tented classes? What kind of life, indeed, is appropriate to a society
whose lower classes are being devoured faster by prosperity than
Puerto Rican immigration can replenish? We have almost no idea
about the forms the answers mi ght take, if there are answers. But
we do recQgnize that one obstacle to any rapprochement between
the discontented classes and the intellectuals is the fact that many of
the latter are themselves of lower-middle-class origin, and detest the
values they have left behind- the dislike is not just one way. They
espouse a snobbery of topic which makes the interests of the semi–
educated wholly alien to them- more alien than the interests of the
lower classes. Only in the great new melting pot of the Anny would
there appear to be instances where intellectuals discover that indi–
viduals in the discontented classes are "not so bad," despite their
poisonous tastes in politics and culture-instances where the great
camaraderie of the male sex and the even greater one of the brass–
haters bridge the gaps created by the uneven development of social
mobility and cultural status. Of course, to suppose that the intellec–
tuals can do very much to win friends and influence people among
the discontented classes is as ridiculous as supposing that Jews can
do much to combat political anti-Semitism by amiability to non–
Jews. Nevertheless, there is only one side from which understanding
is likely to come, and that is their own.
