It’s a black fly in your Chardonnay

Letter two. When I was a small boy, my family drove through the heartland, and I particularly remember the smell of irony in the air, all through Nebraska, Iowa, Wyoming. Now that the corporate farm machinery has taken over, corn has bcome the dominant crop in these regions. But still, in the back woods of West Virginia, irony grows wild in stretches on the glowing verdant hillsides. We used to pick it when we were kids and suck on the stems. But even then we had the horse sense not to eat it raw.

I may be biased, but I believe that the quality of irony is really so much better back home. Picked fresh, it has much less acidity. On tourist traps along the Turnpike, you can still find good quality irony that has been boiled down into that West Virginia staple, the Tall Tale. My father sends me Tall Tales every now and then, which I really appreciate since they’re impossible to get fresh in California. “Well,” he said, “I’ve decided to have one of them sex change operations. Yeah. Decided to become a woman ’cause I’ve about had it with the whole man thing.” Flat, with no inflection, not a hint of laughter in his voice. The one who breaks first loses. Now out here on the West Coast, they don’t know from a good Tall Tale. I picked up a six-pack of Tall Tale down at Safeway last week, but some boxboy had stuck it in the Lies aisle.

The irony that you can get at Safeway is nowhere near as good as the fresh stuff. Something always happens in transporting it to the city — it dries out. It’s rawer, sharper, some would even say meaner than the homegrown. Be that as it may, you can still get good results from prepackaged. Typically I like to cut ten parts truth with one part irony. The result freezes well and it can be microwaved on short notice if company comes over.

Now there are some cooks, even today, that find irony a little too bitter for serving in polite company. But nowadays, especially in American cuisine, I think it must be a joyless cook that doesn’t rely on a little irony from time to time. Granted, irony is sharp and pungent by itself, but a judicious cook can serve an unusually large portion of truth with a dash of irony, and the guests are rarely the wiser for it. Irony covers up the smell of raw truth, tempers it, and generally makes it easier to digest. However, you can’t please everyone all the time; irony is not to everyone’s taste. Old folks and other people with limited perspective tend to avoid anything that’s touched it. To each his own, I suppose.

We both love Brecht, don’t we? He spends a great chunk of his plays sneering at his audience, making fun of their presuppositions. Jean-Paul Sartre quotes Jean Genet: “If I were to have a play put on in which women had roles, I would demand that these roles be performed by adolescent boys, and I would bring this to the attention of the spectators by means of a placard which would remain nailed to the right or left of the sets during the entire performance.” Irony is not native to the United States, but the stuff absolutely infests late-night eighteen-to-thirty-five television these days. Irony is nothing new. It’s just in vogue to dress up comedy in irony right now.

Now let’s turn to Mr. Rilke. “Irony: Do not let yourself be governed by it; especially not in uncreative moments. In creative moments try to make use of it as one more means of grasping life.” Rilke’s advice is sound, but his young poet merely seems to have overindulged in the stuff. You are what you eat. I love a big old bowl of biting irony every now and then, but I have the sense to stay away from others for at least a day or two after pigging out on it. It does make you less pleasant to be around, and so I prefer not to impose my stinking self onto others on the occasions when I indulge.

If there’s too much irony in a batch, no one will eat it. If I’ve made this error, I simply freeze it for a few days, thaw it in the refrigerator, and cut it with more truth. The irony goes well on sandwiches, or with pasta.