In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five probing questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to Lee Siegel, author of Are You Serious?: How to Be True and Get Real in the Age of Silly.
Today, with the same reality shows recycling through networks, unlikely political candidates running for office and outrageous headlines such as “Kim Kardashian’s Butt: Is It Real?” (Yes, that is an actual headline), it’s hard to take anything seriously. Siegel, a recipient of the National Magazine Award and author of three books, attempts to get us back on track and argues that seriousness is the satisfying reward of attention, purpose and continuity.
1) You argue that “the harder it becomes to be serious, the easier it is ‘to be too serious.’” What’s the difference? And how does one avoid being too serious?
As we become distracted, as we heed all the cultural promptings to give way to our impulses and indulge our narcissism, as we-at this time of economic anxiety-sacrifice our principles to our self-interest, we find it harder and harder to be serious about anything. So, in order to hide our silliness, we impersonate seriousness. The literary editor who uses his position to chase female interns around the conference-room table will rain principled scorn on authors who violate his standard of intellectual excellence. The political talk-show host on TV will hide his pandering to his niche audience behind a screen of grave condemnation of the other side. In fact, strident denunciation of “the other side” has become the most popular impersonation of seriousness. What I mean by “too serious” is an unreasonableness and inflexibility that hides the absence of real seriousness, which is skeptical, rational and gently ironic. Moral bombast exists in direct proportion to distracted self-interest.
2) Fine, so now we have a sense of what it means to impersonate seriousness and be too serious, and how to avoid such behavior. But what do we have to do to be “real” serious?
What I explore in my book is the vast discrepancy between rampant silliness in public life and seriousness in private life. Stymied as we might be by our accelerating culture of popularity, profit, and instant pleasure, we all know how to be serious. We know when the three essential qualities of seriousness-attention, purpose, continuity-descend on us like a blessing. That is when life itself becomes a calling and we approach our lives as though they were work: as friends, lovers, spouses, parents, caring strangers. It is when the novelist disappears into her work, when the doctor surrenders himself to the business at hand, when the carpenter becomes seamlessly joined to what she is creating, when we-at the risk of sounding spiritually pretentious-fulfill our destiny in our work, and live as though our very life were our work. What I find remarkable is that, all of us having been born with the gift of seriousness, we are so tolerant of its almost complete disappearance from public life. I rub my eyes in disbelief when I see headlines like: “Is Michele Bachmann Serious?” “Trump Turns Out Not to Be Serious.” “Democrats Claim the GOP Is Not Serious About the Budget.” Republicans Urge Democrats To Get Serious About Spending.” We would never tolerate such a fluid definition of seriousness in our private lives.
3) We take seriousness very seriously in politics. But due to the nature of their work-work being, as you say, the way to achieve true seriousness-aren’t all politicians inevitably guilty of moral bombast? So how can they ever be considered serious?
Because of the many compromises modern democratic politicians have to make, and because of the many interests they have to satisfy, it is almost impossible for them to be serious. I say “almost” because we can all recognize those rare moments when a politician is being serious. I don’t like George W. Bush, but he was serious when, right after 9/11, he beseeched Americans not to turn on American-Muslims, when he called for prudence and calm. He was roundly mocked for urging Americans to go shopping, but I don’t know why. It was a call for civilized restraint in the form of perhaps our most symbolic daily activity, and a reminder that, even in the aftermath of a great tragedy, life goes on without self-pity or the need for revenge. Bush’s subsequent acts-the manipulation of terrorist alerts, the invasion of Iraq-were the height of a destructive unseriousness. His attention became warped by political expediency, his purpose deformed by unreason, his sense of continuity-what effect all this would have on everything from our economy to American’s world position-was broken by the need to instantly gratify his desires. In the wake of Bush’s high-impact silliness, the feeling that Obama was serious, borne out by his eloquence, his rationality and his candor, was precisely why he was elected. The later feeling, on the part of some, that he is “all talk”-i.e. he is all impersonation of seriousness-is what has made some of his erstwhile supporters suddenly doubt his own sense of attention, purpose and continuity-that is to say, has made them doubt the seriousness Obama once radiated like the power of salvation. Seriousness is possible in politics. But it is rare.
4) Silliness also comes up in your book. There is an excerpt in which you say, “Silly is not the opposite of serious. Laughter is the opposite of serious. Silly is something different: it is the enemy of serious. That makes silly the enemy of laughter.” You lost me on that last one. How can laughter and serious share the same enemy (silly) if they’re opposites?
It’s a fair point, but to be opposite to something is not necessarily a moral position. Someone can be gregarious, and someone can be shy. That would make them opposites, but not necessarily enemies. They could, for example, both be members of some vulnerable minority that is being oppressed by a brutal majority. In that case, those two opposites would share a common enemy. That is a rough analogy to the point I am trying to make about seriousness and laughter. We all know that-in a serious context-silliness is the enemy of seriousness. In the course of writing this serious reply to you, I ran into the bedroom to sing a song to my 9-month-old daughter to try to get her to sleep, a song I made up that I call the Schmooky-Po song. It didn’t work (maybe I should have been more serious with her) but it didn’t-I hope-affect the seriousness of my reply. But if I were to send you the Schmooky-Po song as my reply, that silliness would be the enemy of the seriousness you expect from me (which is probably putting you to sleep anyway). Yet here I am, perhaps making you laugh in the course of being serious. That’s what I mean about seriousness and laughter being complementary opposites. The richest laughter I have experienced has wisdom running through it. The most memorable seriousness I know has laughter running through it. Yiddish proverb: “A fool can throw a stone in the water that takes ten wise men to retrieve.” That’s serious, and (quietly) funny, and one of the most vivid commentaries on the successful career of silliness in contemporary life that I know of.
5) Let’s say you were to send me the Schmooky-Po song, which for our purposes happens to be a song brimming with wisdom of the utmost serious kind, perhaps even containing the above Yiddish proverb. You will have managed to make me laugh and teach me something at the same time. So would that make you silly or serious?
Well, I think the Schmooky-Po song is very silly, and not wise at all. I was hoping that my last email was funny and serious at the same time. But if I made anyone laugh that wise laugh of philosophical laughter-Nietzsche writes a lot about that-then I would be surpassingly serious, and not silly at all. I try to argue, throughout the book, that seriousness isn’t seriousness without wit, levity or laughter.
Buy the book: Skylight Books, Powells, Amazon
*Photo courtesy of dimitridf.