People forget that Jim did all he did while having a wife, a relatively stable lifestyle, and a piece of land to call his own. His irreverence and focus on degeneracy was in a way a critique and lampooning of that sort of conduct from the position of someone who could disengage from it and live as a regular human being with prospects and a loving family anytime he wanted. As bizarre as it sounds, Jim is an intellectual, even something of an observational philosopher. We might not believe that, but the Greek philosophers used to do things like live in barrels and only talk to royalty while taking a shit. That's the difference between a real intellectual and a pseudo-intellectual; one who realizes that he isn't actually special, just another one of the crowd.
I'm currently reading a book by (yet another twat) philosopher and boy does that nail it. Someone like Eric Hoffer, author of the great book, The True Believer, was just some guy who wrote down his thoughts and observations, and did so in a humble manner. Meanwhile, most intellectuals believe themselves to be priests of the highest class, and they make me want to call in airstrikes on every university in the world.