In Praise of Uselessness

As the drama critic for the New York Herald Tribune, Walter Kerr has a special irritation. He has trouble enjoying a play when he has to worry about reviewing it.

Now, at book length, he invites others to share his discontent by showing how Americans have let their work spoil their pleasures. "I'm going to start out," Kerr warns in his first sentence, "by assuming that you're approximately as unhappy as I am."

In The Decline of Pleasure (Simon & Schuster, $5), Kerr blames not the usual scapegoat, the Puritans, but the British Utilitarian philosophers of the last century, who declared: "Value depends entirely on utility." As a practical people. Americans readily accepted this practical advice. Americans, he argues, feel that all their acts must serve some useful purpose, and when they do not, they feel guilty. Thus Americans work harder at their leisure than at their jobs, play bridge or tinker with their homes as intently as if the boss were watching. "It is in the privacy of our passing from kitchen to bedroom . . . that we are most conscious of a fundamental unease . . . The sense of going nowhere overtakes us precisely when we are going home."

Burdened by Abstractions. Since the Utilitarians taught them to value only what can be put to use. Americans no longer appreciate a thing in itself. They are immersed in abstractions. Kerr insists, and have lost touch with life in the raw. Modern abstract art mirrors abstract lives; so does the avant-garde theater with its often meaningless chatter. Even business has become abstract. By a mere "shuffling" of papers, a financier can buy the Empire State Building without going near it. "Does he feel on solid ground, clothed in steel and concrete that have become part of himself?" asks Kerr, "or has he simply brushed wings with a form in a dream?"

To restore happiness, Kerr prescribes purposeless fun. It should be as preposterous as possible, with rules as capricious as the one that dictates keeping the arms limp in an Irish jig. Art is the finest form of fun so long as it is not overburdened by a "message." Americans must learn to relax and surrender to contemplation, which is "almost like falling in love." When they have exhausted the pleasure of comic books, they will automatically graduate to Sherlock Holmes, then to Shakespeare, without having to ponder whether it has all been worthwhile.

Kerr's men and women should expect nothing from pleasure but a "memory of delight, an increase of well-being so deep and so central that it cannot even be located, let alone measured and codified for future use." As precedent, Kerr might (but does not) cite Plato, who in the 4th century B.C. told the overworked Athenians: "God alone is worthy of supreme seriousness, but man is made God's plaything, and that is the best part of him. Therefore every man and woman should live accordingly and play the noblest games."

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