Joelle on the Work: camp-followers in ironic masks
parodists were no better than camp-followers in ironic masks, satires usually the work of people with nothing new themselves to say
Context
The novel's aesthetic self-indictment, spoken by its most trusted eye. Joelle's verdict on irony-as-mode is that parody is creative cowardice — the ironic mask is what you put on when you have nothing of your own to risk. The whole early oeuvre proves it out: "mordant, sophisticated, campy, hip, cynical, technically mind-bending; but cold, amateurish, hidden: no risk of empathy," the lampoons "like the finger-exercises of someone… who refused to really sit down and play something to test that promise." Technical dazzle as evasion; the ironic mask as a way of never being caught meaning anything, and therefore never being caught being bad. The book naming its own besetting temptation and calling it hollow.