The New Sincerity

THE STORY: Rose Spencer has just achieved the ultimate young-intellectual’s dream: becoming a staff writer for a prestigious New York literary/criticism journal. And her editor, the smart and attractively cynical Benjamin, is definitely flirting with her—while also respecting her writing. With the sudden rise of an Occupy-style political movement in a public park right outside the journal’s offices, Rose sees a way to participate in what may be the defining activist movement for her generation, but too quickly she must learn to recognize the difference between sincere action and skillful self-promotion.

“Now and then,” writes Lionel Trilling, “it is possible to observe the moral life in process of revising itself.” In this new book he is concerned with such a mutation: the process by which the arduous enterprise of sincerity, of being true to one’s self, came to occupy a place of supreme importance in the moral life—and the further shift which finds that place now usurped by the darker and still more strenuous modern ideal of authenticity. Instances range over the whole of Western literature and thought, from Shakespeare to Hegel to Sartre, from Robespierre to R.D. Laing, suggesting the contradictions and ironies to which the ideals of sincerity and authenticity give rise, most especially in contemporary life. Lucid, and brilliantly framed, its view of cultural history will give Sincerity and Authenticity an important place among the works of this distinguished critic.

Musical Sincerity and Transcendence in Film focuses on the ways filmmakers treat music reflexively—that is, draw attention to what it is and what it can do. Examining a wide range of movies from recent decades including examples from Indiewood, teen film, and blockbuster cinema, the book explores two recurring ideas about music implied by foregrounded musical activity on screen: that music can be a potent means of sincere expression and genuine human connection and that music can enable transcendence of disenchantment and the mundane. As an historical musicologist, Timothy Cochran explores these assumptions through analysis of musical style, aesthetic implications, and narrative strategy while treating the ideas as historically-grounded and culturally-situated with conceptual origins often lying outside of film. The book covers eclectic critical terrain to highlight various layers of musical sincerity and transcendence in film, including the nineteenth-century aesthetics of E.T.A. Hoffmann, David Foster Wallace’s literary resistance to irony (sometimes called the New Sincerity), strategies of self-revelation in singer-songwriter repertoires, Lionel Trilling’s distinction between sincerity and authenticity, theories of play, David Nye’s notion of the American technological sublime, and Svetlana Boym’s writings on nostalgia. These lenses reveal that film is a way of perpetuating, revising, and critiquing ideas about music and that music in film is a potent means of exploring broader social, emotional, and spiritual desires.

Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction: Sincerity, Memory, Marketing, Media -- 1 History: Situating Sincerity -- 2 "But I Want Sincerity So Badly!" The Perestroika Years and Onward -- 3 "I Cried Twice": Sincerity and Life in a Post-Communist World -- 4 "So New Sincerity": New Century, New Media -- Conclusion: Sincerity Dreams -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z

Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, http://www.uni-jena.de/, language: English, abstract: Is a person sincere? This question can be asked several times in every part of the life. It is always hard to find out, if a person tells the truth and has honorable intentions. This question can be asked for literature as well. The reader has to enter the world of the author or narrator and it is unsure what happens. The author could be sincere and can be trusted. It might be also possible that author is a liar. This leads to the consequence that it is unsure what happens with the reader. The reader could become a perpetrator. It is also possible that the reader could be a victim or perceives the story silent. Lots of different scenarios are possible. It is a matter of perception of the reader as well. Every person has a different background and varying expectations, too. This leads to the consequence that the way of perception is subjective and could lead to different solutions. Finally, this can influence the impact whether the author is sincere or not.

What is 'postirony'? Foremost, it is a response to the ironic zeitgeist. Moreover, it is the key to understanding a specific form of literature. The contemporary reader is familiar with and - unfortunately - used to postmodernism's ironic, self-reflexive metafiction. Authors like David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers chose a different path: Despite the reign of contemporary irony, they strive to reach the reader on a level beyond, cognitively as well as emotionally - they claim to be sincere and true. Focusing largely on nonfiction by said authors, Lukas Hoffmann explores the means the texts use to achieve something new - namely, a new form of sincerity.

An NPR Best Book of 2021 NYPL 10 Best Books for Adults, 2021 A story collection, in the vein of Carmen Maria Machado, Kelly Link, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, spanning worlds and dimensions, using strange and speculative elements to tackle issues ranging from class differences to immigration to first-generation experiences to xenophobia What does it mean to be other? What does it mean to love in a world determined to keep us apart? These questions murmur in the heart of each of Brenda Peynado’s strange and singular stories. Threaded with magic, transcending time and place, these stories explore what it means to cross borders and break down walls, personally and politically. In one story, suburban families perform oblations to cattlelike angels who live on their roofs, believing that their “thoughts and prayers” will protect them from the world’s violence. In another, inhabitants of an unnamed dictatorship slowly lose their own agency as pieces of their bodies go missing and, with them, the essential rights that those appendages serve. “The Great Escape” tells of an old woman who hides away in her apartment, reliving the past among beautiful objects she’s hoarded, refusing all visitors, until she disappears completely. In the title story, children begin to levitate, flying away from their parents and their home country, leading them to eat rocks in order to stay grounded. With elements of science fiction and fantasy, fabulism and magical realism, Brenda Peynado uses her stories to reflect our flawed world, and the incredible, terrifying, and marvelous nature of humanity.

Skateboards, football games, prom? Your teenage years have got nothin' on the raddest dude that's ever graced a denim vest. Written and illustrated by Jake Lawrence (Time Cowboy), join Teen Dog and his best friend Mariella as they tackle typical teen life with a manic twist. Growing up is an adventure, and you might as well rock it!