Volume 27, Number 17 · November 6, 1980
Alien Sages
By Frank Kermode
Under the Sign of Saturn
by Susan Sontag
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 204 pp., $10.95
At a time when nobody any longer has a very clear idea of what it means to be educated (uncertain even of the rudiments, we withhold them from our children) there exists a tendency, surprising only at first sight, to make heroes of intellectuals and savants who retain something of the obsolete grand manner. Twelve years back, students who professed to be anarchic with respect to institutions of learning, abolitionist with respect to inherited wisdom, chose to venerate Herbert Marcuse, an aging mid-European polymath in exile. Even today, when that peculiar fervor is dead or dormant, Jacques Lacan draws large crowds in London, and Jacques Derrida in New Haven. It wouldn't be unduly cynical to guess that only a quite small proportion of these audiences has much notion of what the lecturers are talking about. What is wanted is some kind of contact with a sage. These occasions are less pedagogical than cultic. The gap between a normal education and the wisdom of great men becomes a breeding ground of wonder, almost of adoration.
Review, 2819 words
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