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Irony on Wry |
| Section: BOOK WORLD / REVIEWS |
| Author: Maude Mcdaniel |
| Publication: The world & I online |
| Issue Date: 1/1/2001 |
| Size: 1,742 Words, 10,192 Characters |
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THE MEANS OF ESCAPE
Penelope Fitzgerald
Houghton Mifflin, 2000
224 pp., $20.00
Are you as tired of irony as I am? In theory, I mean, where it is probably the most overworked literary concept in the baby boomer vocabulary--not in action, where it truly does occupy a stellar place in any author's book of tricks.
Perhaps what annoys me most is that so many members of the sixties generation think that they, or anyway Abbie Hoffman, invented it. No doubt they'd be shocked to be reminded that irony has been around at least as long as the Bible. (Remember the poor camel stymied by the eye of the needle, not to mention the much older episode of Nathan manipulating David into condemning his own sin--two of many prime biblical examples of the genre.)
The troub...
. . .
...se of personal blackmail, it is amusing and dreadful at the same time. Finally, in "At Hiruharama," the least ironic of the stories, a baby is born, and then another, and, not a minute too soon, the book ends.
Earnestness has begun to creep in, and sentiment, and even principle, may follow. And, as all good ironists know, that is the end of the game. Still, what fun while it lasted. vbcrlf
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