Intellectual Vagabondage

Floyd Dell's critique of modern trends in literary and social rebellion, first published in 1926 when Dell was one of the most celebrated figures in New York intellectual life, was widely discussed and greatly admired in its time. It remains strikingly relevant today, for Dell's challenge to artists and intellectuals has yet to be adequately met. What is the writer's appropriate stance during times of unsettling economic and social change? This is the question Dell confronted at a time when many American writers answered by choosing alienation from the larger society―as many still do today. But Dell saw alienation itself as a surrender and accommodation, a failure to confront the basic problems of the society in a purposeful fashion. Analyzing more than a century of literary rebellion, Dell found among writers a recurrent willingness to evade their responsibilities toward a world of indignities. Intellectual Vagabondage is compelling reading, a searching exploration of the attitudes of modern intellectual life. "Trenchant...eloquent."―Daniel Aaron.