The Importance of Being Earnest

'Wal-Mart, Roy Rogers, Chuck Jones, Anvils, Mason Jars of Whiskey, Wizards Disguised as Dogs, Joshua Tree All-Stars, Bobcats, Feral Kangaroo Rats, Roadkill, Finite Chances, Dream Catchers, Impossible Wasteland Geometries, Quartsize, Spiral Jetty, Funky Artist Retreats, Military Bars.’ What thread could link such a disparate lot of ephemera? The answer can be found in the December 2004/January 2005 issue of US magazine The Believer, in the form of an article about Andrea Zittel’s ‘High Desert Test Sites’. The Believer habitually prefaces its features with a list of apparently unconnected words and phrases, under the heading ‘Discussed’. Part of the pleasure of reading the magazine, the gesture suggests, is to watch the emergence of unexpected relations among apparently unrelated things.

The attitude that The Believer cultivates might be called one of ‘intellectual whimsy’. Whimsy is not unique to that magazine, nor even to the McSweeney’s empire of which The Believer is part, though they do exemplify it and have undoubtedly fostered (and capitalized on) its popularity. But intellectual whimsy is a widely shared attitude, at least among a certain segment of youngish writers and creative types. It is, as Susan Sontag once wrote of camp, a common sensibility, a brand of taste that unites those who have it against the norm. If, in Sontag’s words, ‘the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural’, the essence of whimsy is its flirtation with the insignificant and random. Flirtation, though, not love, because unlike, say, Dada, whimsy triumphs when the import of the apparently insignificant and the relevance of the random are discovered.

Noting the resemblances between whimsy and camp can help prevent the confusion of whimsy with another currently prevalent sensibility: ironic kitsch. Like camp, intellectual whimsy is not best understood as ironic: it places a premium on unabashed sincerity while at the same time treading a fine line of self-parody. It often signals this self-parody by appropriating typographical and design conventions from the past, a tendency that has drawn objections from some quarters. In its inaugural issue the new journal n+1 takes a stand against Dave Eggers for leading what the editors call a ‘regressive avant-garde’. ‘In typography and tone the Eggersards adopted old innovations, consciously obsolete manoeuvres from earlier moments of creative ferment’, they write; in their eyes ‘the Eggersards’ have drained such radical gestures of their significance. The provocative or unexpected becomes the precious.

For the editors of n+1 whimsy signals a dismaying lack of conviction and encourages the conspicuous squandering of energy on trivialities rather than issues of substance. But whimsy’s earnestness can be measured by its fondness for the visual conventions and editorial tone of the Victorian periodical. Examples range from the subtle (Cabinet magazine) to the overt (early issues of McSweeney’s or the very popular Schott’s Original Miscellany) to the exaggerated (visit the web page of Lord Whimsy, author of The Affected Provincial’s Almanac, who styles himself a dandyish, late Victorian Poor Richard). The 19th-century periodicals from which contemporary editors and designers take their inspiration were, by and large, sympathetic to the Arnoldian proposition that educating oneself about culture is an urgently serious endeavour. Every new insight into art and literature helped one grasp the universal moral and spiritual order that it was humanity’s duty and destiny to discover. These days it’s hard to sustain the hope that the world is ready to be put on the right spiritual and moral track by culture. Recall that McSweeney’s was founded to publish stories that had been rejected by established magazines. Whimsy’s affinity with the Victorian bespeaks a hope that culture may regain its bygone influence, but its note of self-parody indicates a defiant readiness to court irrelevance.

In narrative, whimsy emphasizes the unexpected links that connect disparate ideas or events, but the connections must be meaningful. Richard Linklater’s Slacker (1991) is not whimsical because it never proposes that the links between its scenes are anything more than incidental. It embraces insignificance and ponders the possibility of elevating apathy into anarchy. Wes Anderson’s films are whimsical because their unexpected juxtapositions are imbued with sentimental significance. As a visual mode, whimsy favours busy frames and compositions that distract viewers from the centre. It rewards those willing to explore the edges with jokes buried in marginalia or Dalmatian mice sniffing around in the corner of an elaborately composed shot. In all cases whimsy values the ability to appreciate the aesthetic harmony possible among myriad incongruent objects. It draws attention to the act of perception and the sensibility of the perceiver.
This is why intellectual whimsy can readily become grating – it invites you to be pleased by the innovations of another person’s taste. In the 19th century publishers churned out collections of famous people’s ‘wit and whimsy’. The two are close cousins because both are understood to reveal the unique charms of their author. If the author fails to enchant, his whims come off as self-indulgence.

Both wit and whimsy are also intended to amuse, a fact that bears remembering before we mount too strenuous an attack on the latter. With its emphasis on perception and discovery, whimsy is perhaps above all suited to journalism. With a few exceptions, artists whose work explores unexpected ways to combine material tend to rely on other principles of association – the subconscious, conspiracy theory, religious inspiration, coincidence – which suggest greater complexity or offer more expansive horizons. And whimsy’s disregard for the rigours of argument means that it is more suited to appreciation than criticism. But we esteem journalists when they have a talent for discovery and an ability to bestow significance on the incidental. To the extent that any piece of journalism aims to amuse, to pique interest in the curious and to afford the pleasure of the unforeseen, it may verge on whimsy. Discussed: High Desert Test Sites, Susan Sontag, Ironic Kitsch, Obsolete Manoeuvres, Lord Whimsy, Matthew Arnold, Elevating Apathy into Anarchy, Dalmatian Mice, Wit, Conspiracy Theory, Pleasure.