So, pessimism of the intellect, pessimism of and about intellectuals. Pessimism may be where intellect, left to its own devices, tends to gravitate. But in “Intellectual Identities,” a chapter in the new book, Mulhern sees pessimism as a professional deformation. Intellectuals idealize culture as something that they possess and as a possession that is all the more valuable to them because the society around them ignores it—and it is this self-serving idealization of culture that gives rise to pessimism.