The Death of Irony

In the realm of modern fiction, irony is king.

The king must die.

It’s hard to refute that for the last 100 years irony has ruled the world of fiction. From Lolita to Rabbit, Run to White Noise, our 20^th century fictional worlds have been populated by the deviant, the dysfunctional, and the lost.

Before you accuse me of being a starry-eyed romantic, take a look at literary history as described by Canadian critic Northrup Frye in his Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Frye argues that literature has gone through five distinct phases since the dawn of time, and that each phase is defined by the social gap between the main characters and readers:

1. Storytelling begins in mythic mode, where the main characters are gods and demi-gods – as far above the average man or woman as you can get.  
2. Next comes romantic mode, with demigods, like Hercules, or mortals with godlike powers, like Achilles. In this category Frye also includes supernatural creatures like fairies and monsters. 
3. Early modern fiction moves into high mimetic mode, where the protagonists are kings and queens (Shakespeare) and aristocrats. 
4. In the 19^th Century, we encounter low mimetic mode, in which the common man becomes the central character, like private Henry Fleming in The Red Badgeof Courage or Hester Prynne in TheScarlet Letter. 
5. By the 20^th Century, we’ve arrived at ironic mode; here the protagonists occupy a lower social rung than most readers. The modern cast of characters is rife with flawed and fallen people, among them drunks, addicts, prostitutes, chronic liars, young men and women who refuse to grow up, and at the low end, mercenaries, Mafiosi, and sociopaths.  In ironic mode, the author invites us to look down on his fallen characters and shake our heads at the contrast between what their lives should be and what they really are.

So what’s wrong ironic mode?

Nothing.

In its defense, perhaps we have as much to learn from society’s misfits as its paragons, and just possibly, most of us have more in common with the former than the latter.

And like the other modes, irony can lay claim its own wing in the literary pantheon, boasting no small number of classics: Don Quixote, Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye, Slaughterhouse Five, and many others.

Irony, after all, is immortal. It couldn’t be killed if I wanted it dead – and I don’t. I only want to end its tyranny.  And tyranny is the right word.  When we’ve come to the point where authors can no longer argue a vision of the world without sounding laughable, then irony no longer serves as a check on our vanity, but falsely makes us feel superior at the same time it hampers us from improving our lives.

Stories should offer us more. Art has to explore the dark side of life, that can’t be denied, but when irony monopolizes the world of art, it suggests there’s really no point in trying to solve our problems – because the human condition, after all, can’t be fixed.

That’s why irony needs to abdicate the throne of modern storytelling. It's no longer helping us forward, but holding us back. What we need is not more of the cynicism of the 20th century, but a revival of the other positive modes. In other words, authors need to risk putting their faith in something, whether ironists find it naïve or not, and populate their stores with characters that readers can like, admire, and, finally, imitate.

Why I Became a Liberal

In this age of polarity, one has to ask the question—why has the divide between liberals and conservatives become so unbridgeable?

To answer the question, I’ve had to ask myself why my own beliefs have changed so fundamentally in the last 25 years—from those of staunch conservative to steadfast liberal.

I think my own transformation is telling.

I grew up in a Republican family. My father was a prominent businessman. He sat on numerous boards, chaired my hometown’s civic committees, and served as a Republican legislator in the North Dakota House of Representatives. Growing up, I believed that liberals failed to appreciate the need for structure and authority in society, the virtue of self-reliance, or the value of hard work, preferring to piggyback on the achievements of others than work their way to the top as self-made men.

All that began to slip when I moved to Minnesota and found the people here better educated and more sophisticated than my peers in North Dakota. The state’s liberal government had created a superb educational system, a flourishing business community, beautiful parks and cities, and a high standard of living.

I had to ask myself, “What again is so terrible about liberalism?”

At the same time, I worked with African Americans and first-generation Cambodians, Koreans, Iranians, Hispanics. I expanded my knowledge of other cultures, ideas, and values. In short, I became urbanized. I saw that a monolithic set of beliefs didn't work very well in a diverse and complex society, and the only way to maintain the supremacy of one was to ostracize or minimize the others, or to segregate oneself from anyone who was different from you. And I wasn’t willing to do any of those things.

At the same time, the Republican Party began marching sharply toward the right. Ronald Reagan’s elevation of God and money as the defining forces in American life troubled me, along with The Gipper’s swaggering foreign policy and the growing influence in the party of religious fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell.

In the last two decades, the shift accelerated, culminating in the presidency of George W. Bush, who pushed conservative ideology to extremes—abandoning the poor and middle class, fighting wars over oil, deifying the rich, and enmeshing the government in fundamentalist Christian beliefs.           

This was no longer the party of my father. It was something new and disturbing.

To explain the strange terra nova that conservatives now inhabit, I need to return to the basic logic classes that I took in college. There I learned that truth can only be derived by two methods—observation or logic. There are no other options.

Bear with me. Every argument, liberal or conservative, turns on this principle.

Observation is basically science. If I add yeast to dough, and it rises every time I do, I can infer that the yeast causes the dough to rise.

Logic, on the other hand, begins with assumptions and derives truths from mathematical rules. The assumptions are crucial—no matter how valid your reasoning, a false assumption can never lead you to a true statement; if you build your house on sandy ground, it doesn’t matter how well you construct it—sooner or later, it will collapse.

The point of this primer is not academic. It would be hard to dispute that in the last 30 years the right has veered away from science and logic and into the realm of ideology. If you don’t believe me, look at the basic assumptions on which most modern-day conservative beliefs rest:

·      Gay marriage is a sin

·      Life begins at conception

·      God has chosen America to lead the world

·      American culture is superior to every other

·      Climate change is a conspiracy of liberal scientists

·      Trickle-down economics is good for everybody

·      Financial markets are self-regulating

·      Free markets ensure the best of all economic worlds

·      Less government equals more freedom

·      Most people are poor because they’re lazy

The disturbing thing about the list is that none of these claims can be proven or disproven. You either take them at face value or you don’t. Tea Partiers won’t even try to argue them. They’re bedrock, and by nature unquestionable. That’s why a rational person will never be able to convince the faithful by any force of argument that their beliefs are false. The polar ice cap could melt, Florida sink beneath the waves, our croplands transform into desert, and climate change would still be a conspiracy of liberal scientists.

And if laissez-faire economics create terrifying gaps between rich and poor, don’t blame conservative polices—blame the liberals for watering down the ideology. If we only the courage to remove all forms of government interference, then free market competition would create economic well being for everybody.

Liberals, I have to admit, have an equally long list of assumptions, but the list has a more inclusive, humanitarian theme running through it. While not opposed to the principles of self-reliance, it holds that no man or woman is entirely self-made, and that to some degree, I am my brother’s keeper:

·      The right to marry is universal

·      Parenthood is an issue between a woman and her doctor

·      God loves all his children equally

·      Scientists are better qualified to interpret the physical world than politicians

·      A progressive tax system is good for everybody

·      Financial markets, like branches of the government, require checks and balances

·      No matter how high we climb, we all stand on the shoulders of others

·      Only the government can safeguard life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

·      Given the opportunity, most people will work hard to succeed

Liberals have also proven to be much more pragmatic about their beliefs than their conservative counterparts.  Presidents Clinton and Obama have repeatedly angered their bases to pass key legislation, while George W. Bush and contender Mitt Romney have run from compromise like children terrified of being bitten by right-wing attack dogs like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, and the like.

But the really tragic thing about our current lack of compromise is that liberals and conservatives need each other. Society couldn’t function without either one. Conservatives need liberals to push for change, to fight for opportunities for all Americans, and to empower our government to tackle our most difficult problems—just as liberals need conservatives to act as a brake on reckless change, to remind us that many things in life we must accomplish by ourselves, and to keep our government from becoming too intrusive in our lives.

Extremism, on the other hand, doesn’t seek balance—it employs a scorched-earth policy that demands total victory—a victory that ironically would seal its own fate, for if either side ever succeeded in destroying the other, then our ship of state would founder as it rolled catastrophically toward either socialism or corporate fascism.

The greater threat today, however, clearly comes from the right. The 2012 Republican presidential primary should have been a wake-up call for the whole country. One front-runner after another self-destructed in a string of bizarre, extremist rants. In the end, they all felt a greater allegiance to right-wing talk-show hosts than the people they hoped to serve.

But when the dust of history settles, those same talk-show hosts will not be remembered as the great promulgators of conservative ideals they imagine themselves to be, but as demagogues whose principal effect was to make millions of Americans hate each other.

As for the rest of us, we have an obligation to keep our heads level, to ask questions and think logically, to be civil, but where appropriate, to argue, pester, inform, and most of all, to vote the extremists back toward the center.

Latest Reviews of The Islander

Latest Review of The Islander on Amazon.com:
This is the best book I have ever read. I chose it for a book club book because I wanted others to see why I enjoyed sci-fi so much and IT WORKED. Everyone (all women) said they really enjoyed the book and even liked the sci-fi parts.

The book is very well written and is hard to put down. I will read it again and again and have recommended it to all of my friends and family. The only downside is, I wish there was a sequel. :)