{"id":431,"date":"2014-09-01T17:51:25","date_gmt":"2014-09-01T22:51:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulettejiles.com\/?p=431"},"modified":"2016-08-26T18:55:48","modified_gmt":"2016-08-26T23:55:48","slug":"431","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulettejiles.com\/pj_wp\/431\/","title":{"rendered":"Irony and other metallic subjects"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/paulettejiles.com\/pj_wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Scan0052.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-432\" src=\"https:\/\/paulettejiles.com\/pj_wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Scan0052-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"Scan0052\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/paulettejiles.com\/pj_wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Scan0052-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/paulettejiles.com\/pj_wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Scan0052-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/paulettejiles.com\/pj_wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Scan0052-1024x1021.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/paulettejiles.com\/pj_wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Scan0052-624x622.jpg 624w, https:\/\/paulettejiles.com\/pj_wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Scan0052.jpg 1099w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Irony; it&#8217;s going over the edge and on its way down the falls but how will we live without it? David Foster Wallace, from <em>A Supposedly Fun Thing I&#8217;ll Never do Again<\/em>: &#8220;so then how have irony, irreverence and rebellion come to be not liberating but enfeebling in the culture today&#8217;s avant-garde tries to write about? One clue&#8217;s to be found in the fact that irony is <em>still around<\/em>, bigger than ever after 30 long years as the dominate mode of hip expression. It is not a rhetorical mode that wears well&#8230;entertaining as it is, it serves an almost exclusively negative function. ..persistent irony is tiresome. It is unmeaty.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>(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.)<\/p>\n<p>DFW: &#8220;Who knows? Today&#8217;s most engaged young fiction does seem like some kind of line&#8217;s end&#8217;s end. I guess this means we all get to draw our own conclusions. Have to. Are you immensely pleased.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That was 22 years ago. Still, at present, in order to keep the reader&#8217;s interest these constructions called &#8220;characters&#8221; do head-bangingly stupid things\u00a0in order that they might\u00a0involve themselves in desperate situations.\u00a0I think there is some unknown program running on every author&#8217;s computer which if words like loyalty, courage, love or honor come up the entire manuscript\u00a0is killed.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, fiction continues to slide\u00a0and people flock to <em>Guardians Of The Galaxy<\/em>, which is actually a fun film. Sardonic heroes but heroes, great dialogue, action. Fights. Evil crushed by rough men\u00a0and raccoons standing ready in the night.<\/p>\n<p>Movie quote; <em>African Queen<\/em>.\u00a0German colonial official; <em>But you can&#8217;t have come through those swamps!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Filthy ragged Katherine Hepburn;\u00a0<em>Nevertheless<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Irony; it&#8217;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&#8217;ll Never do Again: &#8220;so then how have irony, irreverence and rebellion come to be not liberating but enfeebling in the culture today&#8217;s avant-garde tries to write [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulettejiles.com\/pj_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulettejiles.com\/pj_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulettejiles.com\/pj_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulettejiles.com\/pj_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulettejiles.com\/pj_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/paulettejiles.com\/pj_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1003,"href":"https:\/\/paulettejiles.com\/pj_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions\/1003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulettejiles.com\/pj_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulettejiles.com\/pj_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulettejiles.com\/pj_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}