For someone to be an intellectual, it is necessary that they be interested in ideas and their relationships. Thus in most areas of the United States anyone in academia actively engaged in research can qualify as an intellectual. New York, however, is an exception. Its concept of an intellectual is more European, particularly French in orientation. Here, not only must an intellectual be interested in ideas, these ideas must include particular subjects, most certainly the arts and perhaps also politics. Similar to continental Europe, in New York an intellectual must be culturally and socially aware. This may explain why one commonly hears of the concept of a New York intellectual. But one rarely hears of someone being an intellectual with regard to any other American city, e.g. a Los Angeles intellectual or a Boston intellectual.
Two of the more recent prominent New York intellectuals were Susan Sontag (1933-2004) and Edward Said (1935-2003). Illustrative of New York’s inclusiveness, one was Jewish, the latter Palestinian. Sontag was the author of fiction, essays, and drama. Her subjects covered a broad spectrum: literature, film, opera, drama, dance, painting, photography, politics, illness. She frequently contributed to The New York Review of Books, a publication similar to London’s the Times Literary Supplement and Paris’s La Nouvelle Observateur. For Sontag, “a writer is someone who pays attention to the world” and cultural criticism “is what being an intellectual, as opposed to a writer, is.