Irony; it’s going over the edge and on its way down the falls but how will we live without it? David Foster Wallace, from A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never do Again: “so then how have irony, irreverence and rebellion come to be not liberating but enfeebling in the culture today’s avant-garde tries to write about? One clue’s to be found in the fact that irony is still around, bigger than ever after 30 long years as the dominate mode of hip expression. It is not a rhetorical mode that wears well…entertaining as it is, it serves an almost exclusively negative function. ..persistent irony is tiresome. It is unmeaty.”

(Me; And so on and so on but what to replace it with? We have no larger cultural context to help us avoid sticky sentimentality as the only alternative.)

DFW: “Who knows? Today’s most engaged young fiction does seem like some kind of line’s end’s end. I guess this means we all get to draw our own conclusions. Have to. Are you immensely pleased.”

That was 22 years ago. Still, at present, in order to keep the reader’s interest these constructions called “characters” do head-bangingly stupid things in order that they might involve themselves in desperate situations. I think there is some unknown program running on every author’s computer which if words like loyalty, courage, love or honor come up the entire manuscript is killed.

Thus, fiction continues to slide and people flock to Guardians Of The Galaxy, which is actually a fun film. Sardonic heroes but heroes, great dialogue, action. Fights. Evil crushed by rough men and raccoons standing ready in the night.

Movie quote; African Queen. German colonial official; But you can’t have come through those swamps!

Filthy ragged Katherine Hepburn; Nevertheless.