RARA-AVIS: irony and ???

From: Robison Michael R CNIN ( Robison_M@crane.navy.mil)
Date: 27 Jun 2002


Mario Taboada writes:

Some additional glorious titles by Willeford: _New Hope for
 he Dead_, _The Shark-Infested Custard_ and _The Burnt Orange Heresy_. The titles perfectly reflect Willefordian irony, which is a gentle irony with surprising kinks.

***********************************************

WARNING: BURNT ORANGE HERESY SPOILER FOLLOWS

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

i've only read THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY, but i guess there is irony in a world famous painter who has never painted a single thing. gentle? don't know about that. practically slapstick in this particular case.

but what impressed me most in THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY was the absolutely wickedly delightful satire of the art world and the critic's place in it. its a subtle and quiet and very believable construction of a totally absurd and ridiculous situation, rivalling something from a marx brother movie. its right up there with CATCH-22 in depicting absurdity as the norm.

since irony was mentioned, there's something that's bugging me. in THE SUN ALSO RISES, bill gorton and jake barnes are sitting in a cafe laughing about a couple of literary effects. one of them is irony. i wish to hell i could remember the other. was it metaphor?

miker

--
# To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
# majordomo@icomm.ca.  This will not work for the digest version.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 27 Jun 2002 EDT