the NoCoat coda: surprisingly little irony

The world out-ironizes the ironist. A tongue-scraper co-op inheriting the Fortune-500 slot of a dead broadcast network is a historical rhyme so perfectly apt that it needs no ironic garnish — and Hal, of all narrators, registers it "with surprisingly little irony." The phrase measures its own register by its absence: where the fact is already this ironic, commentary would be redundant, even vulgar, and the only adequate response is plain notation. It is a rare, quiet instance of the book's ideal — sincerity as the register you reach for precisely when reality has said the ironic thing for you. (The endnote coda to 087's TV-ad essay.)