quoted Lewis Hyde, whose pamphlet on John.... : Quote by D.T. Max

“ quoted Lewis Hyde, whose pamphlet on John Berryman and alcohol he had read in his early months at Granada House: “Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy the cage.” Then he continued: This is because irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function. It’s critical and destructive, a ground-clearing….[I]rony’s singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks. ”

D.T. Max
  • From : Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace
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