<p>An original collection of incandescent cultural criticism, both whimsical and personal, full of practical insights and paradigm-shifting advice for how to live a considered, joyful existence in our era of fiber optics and hipster irony, by a Gen-X Princeton professor and contributor to the <em>New York Times.</em></p><p>The essays in <em>The Other Serious</em> examine the signature phenomena of our moment: the way our lives contradict themselves, how exaggeration and excess seep into our collective subconscious, why gender is becoming more rather than less complicated, and how we interact with the material things that surround us. It is a book about the delicacy and bluntness of American life, about how pop culture sticks its finger deeply into the ethical dilemmas of our time, and how to negotiate between the old and new, the high and low, the global and local, the sacred and the profane. At the heart of these reflections lies a central question: What should you do when you don’t know what to do?</p><p>Taken together, these essays comprise a razor-sharp critique of “the administrativersity” of contemporary American life—the idea that we exist in a constant state of escapism and self-protection, fearing confrontation and embracing randomness and absurdity. These pieces investigate the writer’s own way of thinking—putting forth new ideas, questioning them, and urging the reader to adopt the same spirit of re-examination. Full of sage advice and staggering insights,<em>The Other Serious</em> offers us a new understanding of the everyday.</p>