Hr. Ironi undsiger ironi

Efter jeg havde læst Padgett Powells geniale novelle "Mr. Irony Renounces Irony" fra novellesamlingen Typical, 1991, der begynder sådan her:

Mr. Irony renounced irony and took his place in line at Unemployment. Where once he would have found the tedium of the protracted process a delight, akin to the moves of a child's board game, he found the desk-to-desk-ordeal - and getting in the wrong line, and then getting in the right line to have it closed when he was one party from the bureaucrat serving it - officious, small-minded, forgiveless horseshit.
With a sheaf of papers so bulky that he longed for a briefcase to hold them in, he stood on one pained leg or the other lamenting his descision to quit irony. It left him uninsulated against the world, as if he had renounced drink or drugs instead. Despair came after him - with little tentacles it reached toward his balding head from the low fibreboard ceiling tiles of the Unemplyment Office complex. "I rue the day I quit irony," he remarked to the woman behind him.

gik jeg ind og så den uironiske film Unstoppable, om et løbsk, (for alle andre end Denzel Washington) ustoppeligt tog, og morede mig uironisk, men allerede næste dag ...