Você está falando sério?

by Lee Siegel, Giovana Franzolin (tradutora)

A provocative critique of modern frivolity and a guide to being serious in an unserious age

We used to live in a world run by serious people: politicians and religious leaders, writers and artists, journalists and academics, lawyers and business executives, who approached their work with maturity and mindfulness. Today it seems as if most of these figures have all but disappeared, leaving our country and our culture in the hands of amateurs, buffoons, and professional clowns.

Yet, according to Lee Siegel, seriousness has been elusive in every age, and every age has its own particular obstacles to living seriously. In a unique combination of fiction, memoir, history, social criticism, satire, and spiritual reflection, Siegel illuminates our contemporary distractions of profit, popularity, and instant pleasure as we search for ways to be serious in culture, in politics, and in everyday life.

"Are You Serious?" is a thoughtful and enlightening exploration of seriousness in all its incarnations, from the heights of intellectual endeavor to the depths of political conflict to how the word itself is used in ordinary situations, from romance to business. Siegel lays bare the forces in modern life that create the silliness all around us, and he describes how seriousness may be attained through the qualities of attention, purpose, and continuity, in satisfying lives forged in bonds of work and love.

Genres: Nonfiction

Paperback

First published June 28, 2011

About the author

Lee Siegel is a New York writer and cultural critic who has written for Harper's, The New Republic, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and many other publications. Siegel is a senior editor at The New Republic and lives in New York City with his wife and son.

In September 2006, Siegel was temporarily suspended from The New Republic, after an internal investigation determined he was participating in misleading comments in the magazine's "Talkback" section, in response to anonymous attackers on his blog at The New Republic's website. The comments were made through the device of a "sock puppet" dubbed "sprezzatura", who, as one reader noted, was a consistently vigorous defender of Siegel, and who specifically denied being Siegel when challenged by an anonymous detractor in "Talkback." In response to readers who had criticized Siegel's negative comments about TV talk show host Jon Stewart, 'sprezzatura' wrote, "Siegel is brave, brilliant, and wittier than Stewart will ever be. Take that, you bunch of immature, abusive sheep." The New Republic posted an apology and shut down Siegel's blog. In an interview with the New York Times Magazine, Siegel dismissed the incident as a "prank." He resumed writing for The New Republic in April 2007. Siegel's critique of Web culture, entitled Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob, was published in January 2008.

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had no expectations going into it since I bought it at Savers for 2.99. The problem was that as I read it, I got the feeling that something was amiss. Sure enough, when I read the acknowledgements section, I found out why the book was so uneven. The author had taken previous published columns and tried to splice them together into some kind of treatise on the subject of seriousness. It tries to be humorous, serious, ironic, but falls flat each time. It's not that the author is bad. Far from it. His knowledge on world literature and academia is fantastic. It's also esoteric. I had a feeling this book wasn't meant for me or for anyone else I might know.

The book's main problem is a lack of organization. He spends the first half defining seriousness, using the word over and over, and his definitions become convoluted. The opposite of seriousness is not anti-seriousness but laughter, and then there's serious anti-seriousness. And don't forget silly. Then these terms disappear in the last half.

The worst offense though was the fact that in the last five pages of the book, he talks about Capt. Sullenberger's ordeal landing a plane on the Hudson after a bird strikes his engines, saving all his passengers. Siegel says that seriousness is doing your job and fulfilling your role and uses this as an example. And it's perfect! Siegel, if you'd just started with that example and not done so much mental masturbation and wordplay, you would have had me hooked from go because that's perfect!

So now I'm in a quandary. Do I keep this book because its last 5 pages are good? Or do I send it back to Savers?

I could use the 20% coupon.

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

Are you serious, Lee? This is what you decided to write about? Some good insights but a lot of cheap shots too. I'm not sure what you have against Oprah, Lee. Not to defend her as I'm sure she has some faults but you spend an awful lot of time taking shots at her. And the last chapter about seriousness in public service is not what it could be and there surely is a lot of silly to expose there.

Herman Melville wrote my least favorite book (yes, Moby Dick for those who love it and couldn't possibly understand why someone would not - and I've read some really bad books). Lee Siegel's book is certainly approaching Moby. It reads like a series of articles that were knitted together. And it started out great with the Matthew Arnold stuff! Sorry, Lee, but I think this book is closer to identifying with the Age of Silly than with getting true and real.

Maybe it's the book jacket that misleads? I say that because it looked like a book that would inspire through satire, some humor, interlaced with a statement on the silliness we see around us. Unfortunately that was what I expected and did not get.

OK, so really, Lee, this is my fault for putting that on you in the first place. Like when I opened Moby Dick and expected it to be a wonderful adventure. You can just call me Ishmael if you want. My expectations were high and I was disappointed. Perhaps the fault was truly just in me . . . definitely a product of the Age of Silly.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

As Siegel mentions, many times over, too often we take the artifice or the performance of seriousness for the real thing, though it is silliness wearing a deceptive mask.

Siegel attempts to both define and give thoughtful commentary on the evolution of seriousness through a particularly American lense, finally dealing with our situation post-9/11; our supposed post-ironic epoch. In any case, I found the book enlightening and Siegel certainly has a knack for sharp, graceful writing, which kept me engaged throughout.

[Darin · Rating 2 out of 5]

The danger of writing about a definition of seriousness and relating it to silliness is that the reader will quickly begin to meta-analyze the book, wondering when the author himself is being serious or silly. Siegel's problem is that he is often the latter. There are gems to be found, but wading through this one to find it probably isn't worth it.