An intellectual, the current joke has it, is anyone who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger—which should be a snap, after all, for a creature who somehow manages to live life with both a high brow and a pointy head. Yet whatever his dexterity, the intellectual is probably harder to define, gravely or lightly, than any other human variety on earth.

Most dictionaries provide three standard, and inordinately unstimulating definitions: (1) a person with intellectual interests (2) a person who does intellectual work (3) a member of the intelligentsia (which, incidentally, defines nothing, since "intelligentsia," despite its overtones of coffeehouse dialectics, simply means intellectuals considered collectively).