david foster wallace:
so what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? that it's impossible to mean what you say? that maybe it's too bad it's impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? most likely, i think, today's irony ends up saying: "how totally banal of you to ask what i really mean." anyone with the heretical gall to ask an ironist what he actually stands for ends up looking like an hysteric or a prig. and herein lies the oppressiveness of institutionalized irony, the too-successful rebel: the ability to interdict the question without attending to its subject is, when exercised, tyranny. it is the new junta, using the very tool that exposed its enemy to insulate itself.
i abandoned an IR major a few years back because it's easier to be flip than it is to be useful. i am an instant gratification machine, all anger, and will shred things twelve times before pulling them apart to make something good. i'm trying to leave current events alone.
when my sister and i were small, my father read the lord of the rings aloud to us. when i don't know what to do, i think of that.
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