“Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (Coleridge)
Roberts, Edward Glenn (“Fireball”)
Robinson, Anthony B.
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
Robinson, Spider
Rogers, Will
Romano, Ray
romantic irony
Rooney, Andy
Roosevelt, Franklin D.
Rose, Charlie
Rosenblatt, Roger
Rosten, Leo
Roth, Philip
Rueckert, Veronica
Ruiz, Rosie
Ryder, Winona
Salon
The Salt Lake Tribune
Sandler, Adam
sarcasm, irony v.
Sartor Resartus (Carlyle)
Saturday Night Live
Saving Silverman
Schiffer, Claudia
Schlatter, George
Schlegel, Friedrich von
Schoenstein, Ralph
Schulz, Martin
Schwarzenegger, Arnold
Seinfeld
Seinfeld, Jerry
self-irony. See auto-irony
self-parody. See auto-irony
self-reflexive irony. See auto-irony
Sexton, Anne
Shakespeare, William
Shandling, Garry
Shatner, William
Shaw, George Bernard
Shields, Brooke
Short, Martin
“Short People” (Newman)
Shostakovich, Dmitry
Shulevitz, Judith
Silverman, Sarah
The Simpsons
meta-irony of
The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D’oh! of Homer (Matheson)
Sin, Cardinal Jaime
“Sitcoms Say Goodbye: The Cultural Spectacle of Seinfeld’s Last Episode” (Morreale)
situational irony. See ambient irony
60 Minutes
Smiley, Tavis
Socrates
Sogyal Rinpoche
Sonic Youth
Sonny Bono
Sophocles
The Sopranos
South, Richard
speaking in italics
“The Spirit of Irony” (Bertsch)
SportsCenter
Spy
squirming
Stalin, Joseph
Star Trek
Star Wars
Stewart, Jon
Stingley, Darryl
Streisand, Barbra
The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway)
sushi shower curtains
Sutton, Phoef
Swift, Jonathan
A Tale of a Tub (Swift)
Tarantino, Quentin
Tatum, Jack
Teachers for a Democratic Culture
television. See also specific shows
Testimony: The Memoirs of Shostakovich (Volkov)
testosterone
That Girl
Theroux, Louis
This Is Spinal Tap
Thomas, Marlo
Thompson, Jennifer
Thrupkaew, Noy
Thurmond, Strom
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (Sogyal)
“Time Enough at Last”
The Tonight Show
toothbrush thief
totalitarian regimes
Trillin, Calvin
Trotsky, Leon
Troy
Truffaut, François
Truman, Harry S.
T-shirts
Tucker, William
Turn of the Century (Andersen)
Twain, Mark (Clemens, Samuel Langhorne)
Twilight Zone
understatement
United Parcel Service
Urban Dictionary
Usage and Abusage: A Guide to Good English (Partridge)
U.S. Border Patrol
Vanity Fair
verbal irony
“The Verger” (Maugham)
vilrony
visual irony
Volkov, Solomon
Voltaire
Vonnegut, Kurt
Waiting for Guffman
Wallace, David Foster
Wallace, Henry
war. See also World War I
Warhol, Andy
Waters, John
Waugh, Evelyn
Wayne, John
Wellman, Laurel
West, Jessamyn
West Point
Wharton, Edith
Whiteman, Paul
Wilde, Oscar
Wilder, Billy
The Wild Wild West
Willson, Kenneth G.
“Will We Ever Get Over Irony?” (Gates)
wink
The Wipers Times
Wireless Catalog T-shirt
The Wizard of Oz
Wolfe, Tom
woo-wooing
words, ironically used
World War I
wrestling, professional
“Yankee Doodle”
Yiddishkeit
Yogi Berra. See Berra, Lawrence Peter
Yuill, John
ZZ Top
ALSO BY JON WINOKUR
Ennui to Go
In Passing
Encyclopedia Neurotica
The War Between the State
The Traveling Curmudgeon
How to Win at Golf
Advice to Writers
Happy Motoring (with Norrie Epstein)
The Rich Are Different
Je Ne Sais What?
Fathers
The Portable Curmudgeon Redux
True Confessions
Mondo Canine
Friendly Advice
A Curmudgeon’s Garden of Love
Zen to Go
The Portable Curmudgeon
Writers on Writing
THE BIG BOOK OF IRONY. Copyright © 2007 by Jon Winokur. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Winokur, Jon.
The big book of irony / Jon Winokur.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-35483-1
ISBN-10: 0-312-35483-5
1. Irony. 2. Irony—Social aspects. 3. Irony in literature.
PN56.I65W56 2007
809'.918—dc22
2006051161
First Edition: February 2007
eISBN 9781466859753
First eBook edition: October 2013