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.. it was written about 50 years ago by Jacques Barzun: End of an Era. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

By his reckoning, the modern bourgeois form of intellectual self-discipline and honesty “is a broom with which to clear the mind of cant.” This tradition of reflection helps us avoid “trumpery art,” “ideological drugs, “facile enthusiasms,” and a simple-minded worship of science. Intellect encourages what Barzun calls “fineness” and “virtuosity.” One does not just have opinions or commitments. One has a fabric of considered views that are woven from the threads of inherited traditions. They are nuanced, tenuous, and shaded with all manner of uncertainty, but even so, for the Bourgeois intellectual, considered views have the serious weight of truth, a weight that gives shape to one’s sense of self.
And the Bohemian project? It retails itself as the royal road to self-discovery through the alchemy of self-expression. It promises a more “real,” more authentic, and more individual existence. As Barzun suggests, the claims are hollow. The emerging Bohemian Era will be anti-intellectual: characterized by an externalized and collective sense of purpose (politics über alles) and an undifferentiated, amorphous inner life (the empire of desire).

The other night I read a devastating critique of Lady Chatterly's Lover by Katherine Anne Porter. Of the various "names" who spoke up on behalf of its publication on lyBarzun "admirably prudent statement" meets with Porter's approval. (He did not consider the book pornographic; neither did Porter, who thought it would have been better if it had been.)