the soup debate: the anticipated response
Part of Marathe always felt almost a desire to shoot persons who anticipated his responses and inserted words and said they were from Marathe, not letting him speak.
Context
The ironist's most efficient weapon, felt from the receiving end as a killing rage. Throughout the debate Steeply pre-empts Marathe's earnest positions — supplying them, mocking the supplied version, arguing with a puppet — so that the sincere statement never gets to exist. Here the cost lands as autobiography: Marathe's two older brothers did exactly this, "arguing every side and silencing Rémy by inserting his words," and both "kissed trains head-on before reaching marriageable age." The pre-emptive ventriloquism isn't a debating trick to Marathe, it's the thing that erases a person before they can mean anything out loud — the ironic reflex as a way of never having to hear another self at all.