"Sincerity is out. The joke is now on people who're sincere" — the tyranny of irony over sincerity, eight years…
echoes
From: My Appearance (\"Late Night\")
- Early text: On the "anti show," "Sincerity is out" and "The joke
is now on people who're sincere" — "Or who are sincere-seeming, who think
they're sincere"; to seem sincere is "the cardinal sin on Late Night." [middle
section] The only safe posture is to "appear the way Letterman appears on
Letterman".
- IJ echo: The novel's diagnosis of irony as an inescapable cultural default
that makes sincerity unspeakable — the condition E.T.A.'s coaches and the AA
program both set themselves against (the White Flag's un-ironic cliché
discipline, scene 074), and the hollowness it produces in Hal.
- Weight: prefiguration