When my site came down, my oft-referenced account of Dave Eggers's explanation of (and disdain for) irony came with it. This is entirely his work and I will gladly remove it if he or his representatives request, but in my ever-extending (and futile) quest to make the world a more precisely speaking place, I hereby post a vital piece of artillery against the un-literate:
Notes on the Use of Irony by Dave Eggers
pp. 33-35 of Mistakes We Knew We Were Making
(the back-printed appendix to A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius)
Reprinted without permission
p. 235-237 , and in general all over: Irony and its Malcontents
1. This section should be skipped by most, for it is annoying and pedantic, and directed to a very few. They know who they are. Here we go: You can’t know how much it pains me to even have that word, the one beginning with I and ending in y, in this book. It is not a word I like to see, anywhere, much less type onto my own pages. It is beyond a doubt the most over-used and under-understood word we currently have. I have that i-word here only to make clear what was clear to, by my estimations, about 99.9% of original hardcover readers of this book: that there is almost no irony, whatsoever, within its covers. But to hear a few people tell it, this entire book, or most of it, was/is ironic. Well. Well. Ahem. Well. Let’s define irony as the dictionary does: the use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning. (There are lesser definitions, but they all serve this main one.) Now, where, keeping that definition in mind, do we find that herein? We do find some things that might have confused the reader prone to presuming this irony, so let’s address them one at a time: 1. When someone kids around, it does not necessarily mean that he or she is being ironic. That is, when one tells a joke, in any context, it can mean, simply, that a joke is being told. Jokes, thus, do not have to be ironic to be jokes. Further, satire is not inherently ironic. Nor is parody. Or any kind of comedy. Irony is a very specific and not all that interesting thing, and to use the word/concept to blanket half of all contemporary cultural production—which some agéd arbiters seem to be doing (particularly with regard to work made by those under a certain age)—is akin to the too-common citing of “the Midwest” as the regional impediment to all national social progress (when we all know the “Midwest” is ten miles outside of any city). In other words, irony should be considered a very particular and recognizable thing, as defined above, and thus, to refer to everything odd, coincidental, eerie, absurd or strangely funny as ironic is, frankly, an abomination upon the Lord. [Re that last clause: not irony, but a simple, wholesome, American-born exaggeration]. To illustrate the many more things that are not ironic but are often referred to as such, let’s look at some sample sentences, starring a wee wayward pup known as Benji, and see if we can illuminate some distinctions.
SAMPLE: Benji was run over by a bus. Isn’t that ironic?
NO: That is not ironic. That is unfortunate, but it is not ironic.
SAMPLE: It was a bright and sunny day when Benji was run over by a bus. Ironic, no?
AGAIN, NO: That is not irony. It is an instance of dissonance between weather and tragedy.
SAMPLE: It is ironic that Benji was on his way to the vet when he was run over by a bus.
STILL: That is not irony. That is a coincidence that might be called eerie.
SAMPLE: It is ironic that Benji was run over on the same day he misused the word ironic.
BUT SEE: This is, again, a coincidence. It is wonderfully appropriate that he was run over on this day, deserving of punishment as he was, but it is not ironic.
SAMPLE: Is it not ironic that on the side of the bus that ran over Benji was an advertisement for “The Late Show with David Letterman,” a show which many consider often ironic?
OH, OH: No. No.
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