Seinfeld Thesis - A Retort

My senior thesis in college was basically a defense of Irony, which was put under attack by Jedediah Purdy in his book, For Common Things. In the book, he cites Seinfeld, as irony incarnate, the example of what we have embraced, a detached, avoiding of the world...a refusal to hope or to be sincere. I defended Irony and Seinfeld, suggesting that far from a refusal, that Irony was a way to engage the world, to understand our surroundings, to connect with one another - not something that leaves us lonely...perhaps it's the thing that saves us from lonliness - and what we need is more, not less, irony.

Anyhow, that was the gist of it. I just read a passage from a book I still carry around unfinished, The Elementary Particles:

People often say that the English are very cold fish, very reserved, that they have a way of looking at things - even tragedy - with a sense of irony. There's some truth in it; it's pretty stupid of them, though. Humor won't save you; it doesn't really do anything at all. You can look at life ironically for years, maybe decades; there are people who seem to go through most of their lives seeing the funny side, but in the end, life always breaks your heart. Doesn't matter how brave you are, or how reserved, or how mcuh you've developed a sense of humor, you still end up with your heart broken. That's when you stop laughing. In the end there's just the cold, the silence and the loneliness. In the end there's only death.

Ugh.

Update: One big point I borrowed from Rorty is the idea of the private vs. public and how irony functions between the two. Rorty's idea is that irony is important for the private sphere, but has no place in public discourse, where people are supposed to be clear about what they mean and say. Purdy blurs the public-private distinction, that our private lives need to include something "common," that the idea a great society must be about what is shared - values, etc.

This quote pertains to irony's failure in the PRIVATE sphere - that our lives are no better off as a result. But I look at troubling political movements today - namely Islamic Fascism and what worries me is their utter LACK of irony. It is the lack of humor which scares me about the far LEFT in America - and the far RIGHT. Politics without irony methinks leads to totalitarianism.