In 1993, David Foster Wallace published an essay, titled “E Unibus Pluram,” in which he attempted to diagnose what he saw as the malaise of modern American culture. In the essay, Wallace describes ...

Taking its name from the Greek eironeia (dissimulation), irony consists of purporting a meaning of an utterance or a situation that is different, often opposite, to the literal one. Maike Oergel, ...

So when did it hit you that the 20th century might be maxed out on irony? Just this fall, when Fox TV put on a quiz show called "Greed"? This past spring, when Kurt Andersen's novel, "Turn of the ...

Before Sept. 11 people laughed at Bill Clinton when he asked what the definition of ‘is’ is and it was the coolly detached age of irony. Now people ask what the definition of irony is and it is just ...

Well, isn’t this ironic? Just when we need an ironic sensibility to remain cleareyed in dangerous times, we’re told irony is obsolete. And this from some people who’ve made it their business to peddle ...

Whatever happened to irony? Not sarcasm, not snark. Jonathan Lear on why we need real irony, now. (Jesse Costa/WBUR) When the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001, a prominent American essayist ...

With newspapers in Britain forecasting the potential catastrophe of a “no deal” Brexit—chaos at the borders, empty shelves in the supermarkets, the pound through the floor—Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of ...

Are you or have you ever considered becoming a hipster? You better become acquainted with the already-outdated moniker’s attendant signifier first: Irony. You have to eat it. You have to breathe it.

Alanis Morissette was about as big as any artist has ever been in the ’90s. Her cutting lyricism earned her many ears, thanks to the era’s affinity for punchy realism. She released one of her ...

Blackness is, for some, religious. There are sacraments, saints and sinners in the National Church of Holy Blackness. In a new book, How to Be Black, the author is deeply concerned with blackness but ...