Irony and Its limits

I recently came across a nice turn of phrase by Jules Renard, a wry French memoir writer from the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth: “Irony does not dry up the grass. It just burns off the weeds.”

Yes, I think that’s quite right, but only if the irony operates over a culture of conviction. When irony becomes the standard, default stance, then it certainly does dry up the grass.