college classrooms? How can this be decided? More-
over, it is hardly news that major universities, no matter
the lip service, belittle teaching; brilliant teaching does
not help schools gain grants or visibility. Any young
professor devoted to teaching eventually gets the message
or the boot.

An irritated caller, and several reviewers, contended
that narrowness rendered my book inconsequential:
I excluded too many varieties of intellectuals, particu-
larly scientists. Scientists such as Jeremy Bernstein and
Stephen Jay Gould are elegant and accessible authors,
but I am not convinced they have (yet) succeeded earlier
humanist intellectuals. Nevertheless, the matter is open:
is it possible that the energy that once fueled the tradi-
tional humanities now heats the sciences?

Some critics charged that I failed to acknowledge the
new cultural forms and that I pine for the older intellec-

political cartoons, stand-up comics, video, alternative
cable, and gay, female, and black culture have replaced
the parochial culture of old white intellectuals. There
is more here than I can shake a stick at. Nor do I want
to shake that stick. I hardly deify past American intel-
lectuals and their contribution. Nor do I write off
developments by Black and feminist intellectuals. Never-
theless, no matter how they are judged, do these intel-
lectuals constitute a refutation of my argument or merely
a quali?cation?

And Garrison Keillor? Millions more listen to him
than ever read, much less heard about, Lewis Mumford.
But is Keillor a replacement for past public intellectuals?
Or just something different? I began to stammer some-
thing about the nature of public intellectuals. The door-
bell rang; I heard footsteps; my boy was yelling ?Daddy.?
The end was near. am very sorry,? said the radio host.

tuals. They noted that vigorous and popular music,

Indian Giver

?We have no more time.? My book tour was over. Cl

 

Andrew Bard Schinoohler

hen I was a kid there was an

expression you don?t hear much
anymore: Indian Giver. It meant some-
one who gave a gift and then expected
to get it back.

It was a pejorative term, and I sup-
pose the expression has fallen into
disfavor because people think it is an
ethnic slur against the Native American.
But recently, after reading Lewis Hyde?s
The  Imagination and the Erotic
Life of Property (1983), I?ve come to
understand that it is not the name
itself?Indian Giver?that shows our
ethnocentrism. It is our thinking that
there is something wrong with being
an Indian Giver.

The root of the matter is that the
Indians had a different sense of owner-
ship from ours. And different does not
mean worse? particularly in this case.

Among the Indians, a treasured ob-
ject would be the ?Gift??somet_hing
that would move among the tribe?s

 

Andrew Bard Schmookler is the author
of Out of Weakness: Healing the Wounds
that Drive Us to War (Bantam, 1988).

members, never belonging to anyone.
50 an Indian might pass the Gift to an
Englishman who, with his sense of
property, would think, ?Great! We can
keep this in the British Museum.? The
Englishman is into accumulation, and
so he is annoyed when an Indian,
seeing the Gift in the White Man?s
house, keeps it moving by taking it
with him.

In the Indian Giver and his counter-
part, the White Man Keeper, we see
two ways of relating to the goods of
life: as things that flow on through, or
as things that are stored and possessed.

We all know how the contest be-
tween these two approaches to life
turned out. Those who were into ac-
quisition acquired the homelands of
those who were not. The continent is
now possessed by those with a sense
of possession.

But to say that the way of possession
has triumphed is not to say that we are
the winners. Not if we ourselves are
possessed by the spirit of possession.
We live in the richest country in the
history of the world, but it seems we?re

always hungry for more?as if our
things were themselves so much stored
up happiness. As if money, embodying
all the gratification we have delayed,
were a promissory note that promised
a future of ful?llment. Like magic.

I remember seeing on television a
few years back a feature on some Holly-
wood mogul with 250 telephones lining
his Beverly Hills estate, as if by magic
his owning those phones assured that
he would forever be connected with
the world. And then there?s Imelda
Marcos?s amazing collection of three
thousand pairs of shoes?as if she
thought that, by magic, she herself
would last until all those shoes were
worn out.

But life is not like that. As the saying
goes, ?You can?t take it with you.?
Anyone who insists on ?ghting that
fact of life is sure to end up a loser.

Life is a gift that is not ours to keep.
All we can?do is pass that gift along in
our tribe, which alone endures.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh
away. There is the archetypal Indian
Giver. El

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