Sarah's Reviews > Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life

I would have thought that I was the ideal audience for this book. As a child I used to annoy friends and family by intentionally getting tagged out in games of Steal the Rocks so I could sit in jail and spread out my books and read. As an adult I similarly rent an "introvert cabin" on family vacations so that I can escape to solitude and writing.

Hitz does passionately and eloquently argue for the beauty of these retreats, and the importance of intellectual pursuits for the sake of knowledge and contemplation rather than solving problems or accruing wealth. Her arguments are thoughtful and well-written. Many of the sentences are beautiful.

Several aspects of the book left me in the cold, however.

First, its moralistic tone. Rather than arguing that the intellectual path is a wonderful one and that more people should pursue it through work and in their leisure time for its many rewards, she seems to be arguing that it is the *only* such path, going so far as to suggest that other paths reduce human dignity. She even spends long sections warning about paths that look intellectual but aren't, that stay on the surface. This leads to a strange sort of gatekeeping about what counts as intellectual and what does not, and worse, this gatekeeping is inconsistently applied. For instance, studying the lives of birds is introduced as true intellect that can be done outside of a university, but beekeeping or tomato cultivation are presented as surface "simplicity" that isn't deep enough to be intellectual. What? Film gets the thumbs up, but theater is often "spectacle" (overly emotional and ultimately simplistic), and she frequently lampoons television as a mindless couch potato activity.

She also really, really disapproves of alcohol, sex, and anything that is done on a screen. I'm not sure what video games ever did to her, but they get the worst treatment, being likened to shooting heroin or mainlining pornography. All of this judgment was wearying to read.

Hitz is careful to try to sidestep charges of elitism by noting the dignity of manual labor and how it can coexist with thoughtful contemplation and a rich inner life. She doesn't offer the same grace to the middle class, however, frequently criticizing work that "pushes papers around" and tackles "complex but surface problems" as being on a meaningless treadmill. All together, one gets the sense that people like Hitz who pursue a life of the mind are filled with more dignity and humanity than people who might work an office job to provide for their families and then come home and unwind with a little tv or video games and on weekends enjoy food, drink, and yes, sex with the people they love. There is no space for considering that maybe intellectual endeavors give Hitz (and me!) certain rewards and dignity but that there are individual variations in personality and preferences and upbringing that mean that other people find those rewards and dignity in other pursuits than the intellectual. This is elitism.

Finally, I'm probably taking out on this book a disciplinary bias against philosophy, but the lack of considering counter arguments or disproving evidence bothered me. This lack was particularly hard to read when the same works are cited where they provide evidence for her claims and then not when they don't. For instance, Malcolm X is cited as an example of the power of studying in enforced solitude (as he did in prison) but then his work is ignored when she makes the argument that intellectual scholarship should be apolitical and never pursue aims of social justice.

Ultimately, well-written but alienating.