Volume 47, Number 4 · March 9, 2000
The West Virginian
By Benjamin DeMott
For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America Today
by Jedediah Purdy
Knopf, 226 pp., $20.00
Aided by native intelligence, an unusual upbringing and job experience, and study of a few master texts (The Captive Mind, for one), a youngster just out of college, Jedediah Purdy, teaches himself why not to give up on politics and how to resist high-fashion knowingness. The work that describes this self-education, For Common Things, reveals that he regards himself as an outsider and that, like many non-minority Americans, he's absorbed a quantity of points-of-light uplift. His pages fall often into a sermoniacally positive mode: 'I cannot help believing that we need a way of thinking, and doing, that has in it more promise of goodness than the one we are now following.' He's a fierce scolder of elites, their cheerleaders, and their jesters, chiding Harvard students for moral indifference, Tom Peters for claiming 'life is a hustle,' Jerry Seinfeld for being 'irony incarnate,' and at times sounding like mid-career Archibald Macleish pounding 'the irresponsibles.'
Review, 2804 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |