The Importance of Irony

In his recent book For Common Things: Irony, Trust and Commitment in America Jedediah Purdy '97 has written a sermon urging us to take seriously serious things. Above all, the author writes, acknowledge your responsibility to the communities you live in, then shoulder it. For those who want to argue, consistently, against this imperative, there are several vacant cabins in Montana. Jobs on Wall Street await those who do not debate the point. But probably most of us think that working for the common good is not an altogether bad thing. Some of us might admit as much in public. A few of us might do something about it. And one or two of us might even write a book.

Such a book would have two parts: first, it would cry, at length, the ailing cry of the Republic, "O tempora! O mores". Then it would, at length, go earnestly about showing us how to improve both our tempora and our mores. This would be a project no less admirable in our day and no more novel than in Cicero's. And maybe, like Cicero, it would point to happier places and simpler times, not as things to go back to but as suggestions for what we can make of what's before us now. Such a book, I think, would need no defense. Purdy's is almost such a book.

But a book, like his, that goes farther and accuses irony of corrupting public spirit goes too far. Cowardice, tact and irresponsibility all, as Purdy points out, often enlist irony in disavowing publicly a private conviction. For example, someone might say, "Why do I want to work in investment banking, you said? Oh, for the safe money, of course." Most people, after all, don't want to get caught holding an unfashionable belief. What's the news? But my purpose here is not to defend an everyday kind of hypocrisy. Nor, on the other hand, is it to defend the high tradition that runs from Socrates to Kierkegaard of using irony to knock people off of ideas they have long and lazily stood upon. That use, I think, isn't what's bothering Purdy.

There's an intermediate sort of irony, the sort which myth-preservationists like Purdy should be doing more worrying about than the petty and innocuous variety in "Seinfeld", because it addresses itself to objects somewhere between daily trivialities and the stars. This kind of irony addresses itself to the kinds of things, civic responsibility, for instance, that Purdy wants to see saved. But what if this irony is the honesty of our times? What if irony has become not a retreat but a recourse? What if irony alone can now sustain the forms of innocence Purdy so cherishes?

A Harvard student hangs an "Austin Powers" poster on his wall. Boldly assuming that the Harvard student's a pretty smart guy and "Austin Powers" a pretty stupid movie, one must ask why the student would choose to decorate his room in this manner. A genuine and deep admiration of the film, perhaps? A way of appropriating a little of the movie's popularity for his own? A way of holding onto a receding childhood through childishness?

I don't know, but I can imagine it being at bottom an act of irony, a means of imparting some of the sophistication irony presumes to an otherwise worthless pop culture artifact. This act, this connoisseuring of camp, is not a rejection of more serious things but the elevation of a paltry thing to a thing of significance in a world that often seems short of them. The poster, the fear-masking jeers of the "Love Story" audience, the gas station name patches on Park Avenue kids, all these and a thousand other acts of irony are not a craven turning away from the graveness of life, but a poignant attempt to raise something up out of the ruins of broken ideals without the recourse of myth. Futile, maybe--since irony is never truly constructive-- but in its way, honest. Irony, too, is a form of engagement.

In fact, it may be the only supportable form of engagement left to a species that in this century has tacked its way into the horse latitudes of history through an ocean of blood. For the opposite of irony is piety, and piety is devotion to an ideal. But the world wars, Watergate and Vietnam killed our ideals by violence. Our Trumps, Falwells and Clintons will keep them dead by mockery.

Perhaps the fearful fact we're now on the verge of discovering is that prosperity and peace have made us all courtiers to small kings. They are small because their divine right descends from small gods, gods with names like Wealth, Fame and Power. These are imperious gods of last resort, but the only ones left standing. These are not in themselves bad gods and they certainly are not new gods either. One must judge a deity by its martyrs. Many might die for democracy; very few, I think, for the 106th Congress. And how must a courtier live? He must survive by intrigue and scant trust, through deference to the king and his gods, by keeping out of the fields and sun. By, in short, the mean ends Purdy deplores.

If you have found nobler passions, by all means pursue them earnestly. We're all dying to be taken seriously, and it helps, of course, to have a cause, whether a living wage nocturnal reclamation or grapes. But the immediate need to feel big aside, the sincerest pose for many may be one of navel-gazing or just getting by.

To ask them to strike another would be to urge dishonesty. It's not that the un-earnest don't think passion is good, it's just that they don't have any. What Purdy asks is that they take up responsibilities they may well see the necessity of but have no enthusiasm for. What you're asking is that they believe in something they don't find wholly believable, believe in it because the belief itself if not its object would be good. Fair enough. Only leave them the irony they'll need to accept their fate as conscript crusaders.

Aaron K. Roth '99-'00 is a math concentrator in Leverett House.