6/10/1953: I'm sick to death of all this talk

"A long procession of intellectuals, intellectuelles purés wind through my evenings and my days; and Lord, O Lord how sick I am of them—I mean bored, excruciatingly bored, bored all over. The minute you enter the house, see the drinks laid out, the first conversational gambit given, you know it all in advance. The point is that the intellectual without originality, without real heart or vision or grace, an intellectual by habit, a competitive soused-up intellectual is a mockery of the artist's and the religious man's vision—he comes in always walking in shoes that are too large for him, he talks by habit, he lives in a routine. You never know with these people whether you are talking criticism or gossip. I'm sick to death of all this talk, self-perpetuating, competitive talk."

~~ from Alfred Kazin's Journals, Selected and Edited by Richard M. Cook