Marathe & Steeply on the temple: 'a little naïve, Rémy?'
Steeply’s face had assumed the openly twisted sneering expression which he knew well Québecers found repellent on Americans. ‘But you assume it’s always choice, conscious, decision. This isn’t just a little naïve, Rémy? You sit down with your little accountant’s ledger and soberly decide what to love? Always?’
Context
The ironist's second move, after the weary needle, is to name earnestness naïve. Sincerity is redefined as unsophistication — the belief that one could "soberly decide what to love" is treated as a child's picture of the world — so that the position of not-quite-meaning-anything becomes the intelligent one by default. And Wallace gives the move a face: the "openly twisted sneering expression" that Marathe's culture reads as the specifically American disease. The sneer is a cultural sign, legible across the border; irony has a physiognomy, and the people it is aimed at can see it coming.