FOR COMMON THINGS: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America Today.

• Author: Kahlenberg, Richard D.
• Position: Review

FOR COMMON THINGS: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America Today

by Fedediah Purdy Knopf, $20.00

IN 1992, AT THE TAIL END OF the Reagan-Bush era, I published a memoir about my time at Harvard Law School, lamenting that so many idealistic liberals (myself included) were tempted by the fruit of corporate law. But the book also held out hope that if a Democratic president were elected, perhaps there would be a rush away from the greed and cynicism of the 1980s and public service and political activism would be restored to the lofty heights of earlier eras.

In 1999, Jedediah Purdy, now a Yale Law student, has published an idealistic book which rightly argues that at the end of the Clinton presidency, we are in fact worse off than ever: less committed, more cynical, more sarcastic. Says Purdy, "To talk about politics today is to presume insincerity. It is the requirement of even modest political sophistication to understand that public figures neither say what they mean nor mean what they say"

Purdy's book, For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America day, is written as "a response to an ironic time" The book, which contrasts Purdy's childhood in rural West Virginia with the jaded environs of Exeter and Harvard College, is a protest against a culture which reveres irony, which he defines as the "refusal to believe in the depth of relationships, the sincerity of motivation, or the truth of speech -- especially earnest speech" Purdy makes his case passionately and sometimes eloquently, but the strongest evidence about the tenor of our times comes not so much from the book itself as from the public reaction to it. The book and its author have received a flood of attention from the elite media and it turns out that lots of people, including lots of liberals, hate the book and intensely dislike the author. What is it that gets people so worked up? Several explanations emerge.

The first, and the most legitimate, criticism is that in taking on all that is ironic, Purdy overreached. Irony, as opposed to cynicism, can be a source of enjoyment and humor and a devastating tool for exposing hypocrisy. A liberal against irony unilaterally disarms and gives up on the right to savor a cartoon of George W. Bush delivering a sermon about "merit" while standing on a platform built of his many unearned advantages. A proper sense of irony can keep idealism exhilarating and inspirational yet grounded; a lack of irony can render it somber and...