Jon Winokur defines and classifies irony and contrasts it with coincidence and cynicism, and other oft-confused concepts that many think are ironic.
He looks at the different forms irony can take, from an irony deficiency to visual irony to an understatement, using photographs and relate-able examples from pop culture.
* "Irony in Action" looks at irony in language, both verbal and visual, while "Bastions of Irony" and "Masters of Irony" look at institutions and individuals steeped in irony, though not always intentionally.
PLUS:
* The Annals of Irony looks at irony, and its lack thereof, throughout history.
A delight for anyone with a smart, dark sense of humor.
Jon Winokur defines and classifies irony and contrasts it with coincidence and cynicism, and other oft-confused concepts that many think are ironic.
He looks at the different forms irony can take, from an irony deficiency to visual irony to an understatement, using photographs and relate-able examples from pop culture.
* "Irony in Action" looks at irony in language, both verbal and visual, while "Bastions of Irony" and "Masters of Irony" look at institutions and individuals steeped in irony, though not always intentionally.
PLUS:
* The Annals of Irony looks at irony, and its lack thereof, throughout history.
A delight for anyone with a smart, dark sense of humor.
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Overview
Jon Winokur defines and classifies irony and contrasts it with coincidence and cynicism, and other oft-confused concepts that many think are ironic.
He looks at the different forms irony can take, from an irony deficiency to visual irony to an understatement, using photographs and relate-able examples from pop culture.
* "Irony in Action" looks at irony in language, both verbal and visual, while "Bastions of Irony" and "Masters of Irony" look at institutions and individuals steeped in irony, though not always intentionally.
PLUS:
* The Annals of Irony looks at irony, and its lack thereof, throughout history.
A delight for anyone with a smart, dark sense of humor.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781250029713 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martins Press-3PL |
| Publication date: | 07/25/2012 |
| Pages: | 194 |
| Sales rank: | 280,245 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.45(d) |
About the Author
Jon Winokur is the author of various reference books and anthologies, including Encyclopedia Neurotica, The Portable Curmudgeon, The Rich Are Different, Ennui to Go and The War Between the State. He lives in Pacific Palisades, California.
Read an Excerpt
The Big Book of Irony
By Jon Winokur
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2007 Jon WinokurAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-5975-3
CHAPTER 1
Toward a Definition of Irony
Irony is inherently confusing. Not only are its definitions confusing; it is confusing by definition.
— Jennifer Thompson, "Irony: A Few Simple Definitions," Teachers' Resource Web
Irony is the intentional transmission of both information and evaluative attitude other than what is explicitly presented.
— Linda Hutcheon,Irony's Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony (1994)
Irony deals with opposites; it has nothing to do with coincidence. If two baseball players from the same hometown, on different teams, receive the same uniform number, it is not ironic. It is a coincidence. If Barry Bonds attains lifetime statistics identical to his father's, it will not be ironic. It will be a coincidence.
Irony is "a state of affairs that is the reverse of what was to be expected; a result opposite to and in mockery of the appropriate result." For instance: A diabetic, on his way to buy insulin, is killed by a runaway truck. He is the victim of an accident. If the truck was delivering sugar, he is the victim of an oddly poetic coincidence. But if the truck was delivering insulin, ah! Then he is the victim of an irony.
If a Kurd, after surviving bloody battle with Saddam Hussein's army and a long, difficult escape through the mountains, is crushed and killed by a parachute drop of humanitarian aid, that, my friend, is irony writ large.
Darryl Stingley, the pro football player, was paralyzed after a brutal hit by Jack Tatum. Now Darryl Stingley's son plays football, and if the son should become paralyzed while playing, it will not be ironic. It will be coincidental. If Darryl Stingley's son paralyzes someone else, that will be closer to ironic. If he paralyzes Jack Tatum's son that will be precisely ironic.
— George Carlin,Brain Droppings (1997)
Irony is a way of containing two opposites in your head at the same time.
— Douglas Coupland, "The Post Modern Ironic Wink," To the Best of Our Knowledge, Wisconsin Public Radio, June 26, 2005
The word "irony" does not now mean only what it meant in earlier centuries, it does not mean in one country all it may mean in another, nor in the street what it may mean in the study, nor to one scholar what it may mean to another.
— D. C. Muecke,Irony and the Ironic (1982)
There are two broad uses in everyday parlance. The first relates to cosmic irony and has little to do with the play of language or figural speech. ... This is an irony of situation, or an irony of existence; it is as though human life and its understanding of the world is undercut by some other meaning or design beyond our powers. ... The word irony refers to the limits of human meaning; we do not see the effects of what we do, the outcomes of our actions, or the forces that exceed our choices. Such irony is cosmic irony, or the irony of fate.
— Claire Colebrook,Irony: The New Critical Idiom (2004)
Irony is the result of the human capacity for mental detachment from the stream of experience. Because of this capacity, human beings are able to step back from the rush of sensory experience and render it an object of contemplation.
— Glenn S. Holland,Divine Irony (2000)
Irony is really only hypocrisy with style.
— Barbara Everett,Looking for Richard (1996)
After crying, one puts on dark glasses to hide one's swollen red eyes and save dignity. ... The glasses suggest the presence of a critical situation whose unsuitable aspect is masked at once. Whoever puts them on wants, on the one hand, to receive sympathy for the uneasiness alluded to and, on the other hand, to arouse admiration for succeeding in not exhibiting such discomfort and for avoiding being too upset by it. In the same way, irony can be likened to a pair of "dark glasses," "uncovering" what it apparently hides. Moreover, just as dark glasses "conceal what they display," irony is a strategy for indirect speech. It is a "meaning-full" mask, and it has the prerogative of rendering flexible the borders of the area of meaning, allowing for their negotiation in accordance with the situation.
— Luigi Anolli et al., "Behind Dark Glasses: Irony As a Strategy for Indirect Communication," Genetic, Social & General Psychology Monographs, February 1, 2002
Paradoxically ... the people most likely to know the literal definition of irony are the people least likely to appreciate it in its modern form.
— Jonah Goldberg,National Review, April 28, 1999
CHAPTER 2Irony Versus ...
There are those who insist on a strict definition of irony, while others are less demanding. It's prescriptivists versus descriptivists in an age-old semiotic dispute. Prescriptivists maintain that linguistic permissiveness is an agent of ignorance, that effective communication requires precision and predictability. For descriptivists, who see language as an evolving entity, the meanings of words are determined by usage, the sole arbiter of legitimacy. It's a battle that neither side can win because the combatants fail to distinguish among the many forms of irony, or even between its two most common varieties: verbal irony, saying one thing and meaning another, and ambient or cosmic irony, that fateful disjunction between expectation and reality at the core of human existence. But even without such ideological disputes, defining irony is a delicate enterprise. We can say what it isn't with more confidence, so let us distinguish irony from various "confusables."
IRONY VERSUS COINCIDENCE
Irony involves incongruity between what is expected and what actually happens; coincidence merely denotes spatial or temporal proximity. It is ironic that Beethoven was deaf, but merely coincidental that while two members of ZZ Top, Billy F. Gibbons and Dusty Hill, have long beards, the third member, Frank Beard, is clean shaven.
A lot of people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch of unconnected incidences and things. They don't realize that there's this like lattice of coincidence that lays on top of everything. I'll give you an example, show you what I mean. Suppose you're thinking about a plate of shrimp. Suddenly somebody will say like "plate" or "shrimp" or "plate of shrimp" out of the blue, no explanation. No point in looking for one either. It's all part of a cosmic unconsciousness.
— From Repo Man (1984, screenplay by Alex Cox)
IRONY VERSUS HYPOCRISY
A lot of what passes for irony these days is merely hypocrisy. For example, when it was revealed that William Bennett, author of The Book of Virtues, had a secret gambling habit, more than one commentator termed the irony "delicious," and it was indeed a pleasure to see such a breathtaking hypocrite get his comeuppance, even though Bennett was publicly unrepentant. But it wasn't irony; it was only hypocrisy. (It was ironic when, on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart commended Bennett for his indignation and for "standing up to the William Bennetts of the world.")
It was said to be "ironic" but, again, it was just hypocritical, when Linda Chavez, President Bush's nominee for Labor Secretary, was forced to withdraw from consideration after it was alleged that she had employed an illegal alien. Chavez had publicly criticized Zoe Baird, President Clinton's nominee for Attorney General, for failing to make Social Security payments for a nanny she'd employed. Bonus hypocrisy: At the news conference announcing her withdrawal Chavez said, "I do believe that Zoe Baird was treated unfairly."
Irony or ironic can be handy code when you can't come right out and call a public figure a hypocrite. Thus did The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd point out the "irony" of Senator John McCain's raising soft money to finance his campaign against soft money.
IRONY VERSUS SARCASM
Irony is subtle, sarcasm blunt:
Irony must not be confused with sarcasm, which is direct: Sarcasm means precisely what it says, but in a sharp, bitter, cutting, caustic, or acerb manner; it is the instrument of indignation, a weapon of offence, whereas irony is one of the vehicles of wit. In Locke's "If ideas were innate, it would save much trouble to many worthy persons," worthy is ironical; the principal clause as a whole is sarcastic — as also is the complete sentence. Both are instruments of satire and vituperation.
— Eric Partridge,Usage and Abusage: A Guide to Good English (1995 revised edition)
People who don't get irony interpret it as sarcasm.
— Douglas Coupland, "The Post Modern Ironic Wink," To The Best of Our Knowledge, Wisconsin Public Radio, June 26, 2005
Irony is essentially constructive, sarcasm malicious. Which doesn't mean sarcasm can't be fun:
To the Sports Editor:
Aren't we just imposing our North American concepts of chronology and numbers in insisting that a Dominican youth have the right birthday in order to credit his performance in the Little League World Series? Certainly in the postmodern era, we should understand that people in other parts of the world don't necessarily share our values. Regardless of his birth date, Danny Almonte's feat in pitching a perfect game and striking out 16 of 18 batters will live in history. It belongs right up there with the feats of that other great New York athlete, Rosie Ruiz.
— William Tucker,The New York Times, September 2, 2001
IRONY VERSUS CYNICISM
Irony discriminates; cynicism does not.
The cynic, harboring at least a residual sense of his own superiority, stays home and denounces callow and frivolous party-goers. The ironist goes to the party and, while refusing to be quite of it, gets off the best line of the evening.
— Jedediah Purdy,For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America Today (1999)
I am the most uncynical person on Earth. I'm ironic. I admit that. I'm Joe Irony. But people confuse irony with cynicism, which is like battery acid. It just wrecks everything.
— Douglas Coupland, quoted by Steve Rabey, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 11, 2000
IRONY VERSUS EUPHEMISM
Euphemism conceals, irony reveals, albeit by stating the opposite. Political correctness, that virulent strain of euphemism, often generates irony, as when, during the 1992 Rodney King riots ("rebellion" in some reportage), a Los Angeles TV newsperson referred to thugs who attacked white motorists as "community leaders," even though they called themselves "gang members."
IRONY VERSUS BULLSHIT
In his 2005 bestseller, On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University, deplores the spread of bullshit in American culture. Professor Frankfurt defines a "bullshitter" as someone who doesn't care whether what he says is true or false. Irony, on the other hand, is a means of reaching or expressing the truth. The bullshitter disregards the truth; the ironist respects it. Bonus irony: On Bullshit, with its measured academic prose punctuated by the word bullshit, is an elegantly ironic book.
CHAPTER 3Forms of Irony
Irony resists categorization, but a few varieties can be distinguished.
AMBIENT IRONY (AKA SITUATIONAL IRONY, COSMIC IRONY, EXISTENTIAL IRONY, METAPHYSICAL IRONY, TRAGIC IRONY, THE IRONY OF FATE)
Irony exists in nature. It's part of the human condition; it permeates reality like radiation from the Big Bang. Ambient irony happens, whether created by God or Destiny or dumb luck. It results from the difference between what we want and what we get.
Man proposes, but God disposes.
— Thomas à Kempis,Imitation of Christ (circa 1418)
If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron.
— Spider Robinson,God Is an Iron (1977)
It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator — our very self-consciousness — is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution.
— Annie Dillard,Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974)
It is after you have lost your teeth that you can afford to buy steaks.
— Pierre-Auguste Renoir (attributed)
How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.
— Barry Lopez,Arctic Dreams (1986)
If irony isn't literally wired into the human brain, it seems an inevitable response to the human condition. The original ironic juxtaposition, after all, is the spirit plunked down in the material world — a brief sample of the eternal popped into the mechanical drum track of time. Unless somebody figures out how to get comfortable with that, irony's going to be with us until the whole mess comes crashing down. Oh, well. At least we get the last laugh.
— David Gates, "Will We Ever Get Over Irony?" Newsweek, January 1, 2000
AMICABLE IRONY
Ritual irony among friends, as when guys insult each other affectionately, or when fellow members of the same race or ethnic group greet each other with ethnic slurs. (No examples will be supplied.)
AUTO-IRONY (AKA SELF-IRONY, SELF-REFLEXIVE IRONY, SELF-PARODY)
Feigned self-effacement; irony that seeks to disarm one's critics by making fun of oneself. The auto-ironist says, in effect, "Hey, I don't take myself seriously — I'm a regular person, just like you!" The 1950s movie actor George Hamilton, for example, has kept himself marginally in the public eye for decades by kidding his own narcissism. William Shatner is another master of auto-irony, as seen on TV in Priceline commercials, and as evidenced by his CD, Has Been, recorded at a time when the former Star Trek star was widely regarded a has-been. In 2006, Shatner sold his kidney stone for twenty-five thousand dollars, which he donated to Habitat for Humanity, then had the following exchange on CNN's Showbiz Tonight:
A. J. Hammer:
Twenty-five thousand dollars is nothing to sneeze at. ...
Shatner: If you sneezed at it, we might be able to sell that, too.
In the auto-ironic cameo, a celebrity appears in a movie as himself and mocks his public image, as if to say, "Let me make fun of myself before someone else does." Neil Diamond revitalized his career that way. Though he'd sold over 100 million records and was still a top-drawing concert performer, Diamond had long been a figure of fun, what with the shiny shirts, triumphant hair, and lyrics that seem translated from a foreign language. Hard-core rockers never took him seriously, and Rolling Stone dubbed him "the Jewish Elvis." After all, he'd recorded the soundtrack to Jonathan Livingston Seagull, done that schmaltzy "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" duet with Barbra Streisand, and cowritten and performed "Heartlight," inspired by the 1982 movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Baby Boomers' parents liked Neil Diamond's music, but Boomers themselves listened to it ironically, or not at all. Then he did an auto-ironic cameo in the 2001 film Saving Silverman, in which the main characters play in a Neil Diamond cover band. The appearance endeared him to a generation of under-forty fans for whom Neil Diamond was suddenly ... cool. Bonus irony: For once it's the Gen Xers who are clueless.
Auto-ironic television commercials flatter the intelligence of the audience, pretending to let viewers in on the joke so they can congratulate themselves on their superiority, not only to people who fall for commercials, but also to those who create them. A subgenre uses 1960s and '70s hits as background music in an attempt to have it both ways, that is, simultaneously appeal nostalgically to oldsters and ironically to youngsters.
DEAD IRONY
Familiarity displaces irony so that some ironies erode over time and finally disappear. Thus did underwhelm begin as an ironic nonce word, gradually gain acceptance through usage, and eventually emerge irony-free. The process isn't exclusively verbal:
At some point, after you continually act a certain way to "ironically comment" on something, well, that just becomes you. Even if you have learned to isolate it out of the context it is commonly used in, it's your mannerism now. Case(s) in point: (1) Joke dancing. If you keep joke dancing, you are in fact practicing and one day, you'll forget how you used to dance and most importantly, your friends will forget how you used to dance. You will dance exactly in the way you have been mocking, because really you've been practicing on the dance floor. (2) Woo-wooing. If you say "woo-woo" as an expression of excitement to poke fun at frat and sorority types that do that at shows, parades, etc. (basically anywhere there is a crowd), you may find yourself being (disappointingly) the person in your group who is the "woo-woo" person. The only save being that you, of course, don't do this behavior in the expected context (crowds), but instead do it only in unexpected contexts, such as a small group of three at a nice restaurant. So it is still funny, but only just. Don't do it on a dance floor though, or you've become the joke dancing "woo-woo" person.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Big Book of Irony by Jon Winokur. Copyright © 2007 Jon Winokur. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Epigraph,
Introduction,
Note on Bonus Irony,
Toward a Definition of Irony,
Irony Versus ...,
Forms of Irony,
The Annals of Irony,
Irony Takes a Holiday,
Irony in Action,
Bastions of Irony,
Masters of Irony,
Against Irony,
In Defense of Irony,
Ironic, No?,
Are You Ironic?,
Index,
Also by Jon Winokur,
Copyright,