[lbo-talk] only intellectuals love poverty

Dennis Claxton ddclaxton at earthlink.net
Mon Mar 20 12:30:07 PST 2006


Carroll wrote:


>Perhaps, but I've lived among intellectuals for the last 60 years -- and
>I've yet to meet one who loved poverty. Perhaps all the poverty-loving
>intellectuals are hiding on Manhattan someplace.

The idea is that intellectuals love other people's poverty. It's like this passage from Genet's "Thief's Journal", where he writes about French tourists in Barcelona gazing down on and photographing Genet and his lice-ridden crew:

"Without considering that they might be wounding the beggars, they carried on, above their heads, an audible dialog, the terms of which were exact and rigorous, almost technical" (Then Genet records some of the dialog) "There's a perfect harmony between the tonalities of the sky and the slightly greenish shades of the rags....something out of Goya...They have to be seen when the weather is right.....They're happier than we are."



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