Sincerely yours

Erica Wagner on what it really means to mean it

David Bowie always seemed to mean it, no matter what iteration he was in

In 1972, Richard M. Nixon made his historic visit to China — the first time an American President had set foot in the People’s Republic. That was February; a few months later, in June, burglars were arrested in the office of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex, the beginning of the scandal that would be Nixon’s downfall. Strange, how those almost seem like palmy days now, when criminality was — at least eventually — held to account.

It was the year when Ziggy Stardust made his first appearance, when Abba got into their groove. On December 14 Apollo 17 lifted off from the surface of the Moon: no human beings have been back since. Real diplomacy and deep deception — an artist whose identity was impossible to capture or settle — seemingly evanescent music that has, nevertheless, stood the test of time. Our last human voyage into deep space: and there are those who still doubt, of course, that we ever got there, a conspiracy theory surely enabled by the existence of a real conspiracy at the heart of government. The end of the 20th century, when the boundaries between the perceived and the real began to seem fabulously — or terrifyingly — mutable.

That same year Lionel Trilling’s Charles Eliot Norton lectures, delivered at Harvard, were published as a little book: Sincerity and Authenticity. Trilling’s name was once one to conjure with, an eminent and powerful critic in the days when it was not peculiar to describe someone so. His single completed novel, The Middle of the Journey, published in 1947, is set in a United States riven by political conflict; surely one to reappraise on Backlisted. In its brisk insightful overview of how we choose to present ourselves to the world (both in our actual selves and via the art we create) this compact text remains instructive reading. Certainly, some of notions and usage (the general terms for humanity being ‘man’ and ‘men’ for instance) are dated: but it asks the reader to question what sincerity and authenticity actually are and then, to consider whether or why we believe in them. It also draws attention to the dangers of these ideas, particularly the idea of authenticity — a danger that is ever more apparent in our daily lives.