Indeed, but nothing new in such 'realization.' That's another old modernist theme: the idiocy of 'petit-bourgeois romanticism' & self-deprecation of 'renegade intellectuals.' D.H. Lawrence specialized in it, both exploiting this theme and sardonically laughing at himself doing so at the same time.
***** "Worm Either Way" (1929)
If you live along with all the other people and are just like them, and conform, and are nice you're just a worm -- and if you live with all the other people and you don't like them and won't be like them and won't conform then you're just the worm that has turned, in either case, a worm.
The conforming worm stays just inside the skin respectably unseen, and cheerfully gnaws away at the heart of life, making it all rotten inside.
The unconforming worm -- that is, the worm that has turned -- gnaws just the same, gnawing the substance of life, but he insists on gnawing a little hole in the social epidermis and poking his head out and waving himself and saying: Look at me, I am _not_ respectable, I do all the things the bourgeois daren't do, I booze and fornicate and use foul language and despise your honest man --
But why should the worm that has turned protest so much? The bonnie, bonnie bourgeois goes a-whoring up back streets just the same. The busy, busy bourgeois imbibes his little share just the same if not more. The pretty, pretty bourgeois pinks his language just as pink if not pinker, and in private boasts his exploits even louder, if you ask me, than the other. While as to honesty, Oh, look where the money lies!
So I can't see where the worm that has turned puts anything over the worm that is too cunning to turn. On the contrary, he merely gives himself away. The turned worm shouts: I bravely booze! The other says: What? Cat-piss? The turned worm boasts: I copulate! the unturned says: You look it. You're a d--- b--- b--- p--- bb---, says the worm that's turned. Quite! says the other. Cuckoo! *****
As I said, it's _late_ modernism, and its cultural themes come from recycle bins, flea markets, thrift shops, used-book stores, rental-video shops. Perhaps we should call this 'secondhand, hand-me-down modernism.' What makes 'renegade intellectuals' (especially late modernist ones -- I like Beckett still) often tiresome is that when they feel despair, they insist that _everyone else_ should also. When they feel like 'middle-class frauds,' they again proclaim that _everyone else_ should as well. They make it sound as if they felt the working class owed them socialism. However, since they can't afford to blame the working class tout court, they blame or laugh at other intellectuals.
Marx was never God, socialism was never religion, so no point in feeling 'betrayed by the God That Failed.' Either _we_ (the working class) make socialism or we don't, under the circumstances not of our own making. That's all there is to it. Nothing was ever guaranteed. If we are weak, chalk it up to the cunning & strength of our enemies.
Yoshie