INTELLECTUALS TODAY: Problems in a Changing Society

Author (Troublemakers--1962), editor (the British Tribune), commentator (BBC), Mr. Fyvel has interpreted and correlated his spotcheck of contemporary opinions covering a broad spectrum of ideas and issues and articulated, through interviews, by a number of young Englishmen, Frenchmen and Germans. In the opening chapters he defines and justifies the ""awkward"" term intellectual, shows the pattern of change (today's stress on innovation) and the positions of the intelligentsia from the isolation of the '20's through the dissidence of the '30's to the integration of today in the affluent society. An assortment of English writers, scientists, historians, a critic, etc., etc. speak about anything from nuclear war to education to God or His non-existence to the new directions for creative talent. In the excerpted French and German commentaries, Mr. Fyvel indicates that the French young intellectuals today are more guarded than avant, while the Germans form a truly radical and disaffected sector. All in all, a relatively stimulating cultural interchange.