Day vs. Gately: the slogan that deepens
‘I Didn’t Know That I Didn’t Know’ is another of the slogans that looks so shallow for a while and then all of a sudden drops off and deepens like the lobster-waters off the North Shore.
Context
Gately's rebuttal isn't an argument — it's a report from the far side of an experience Day hasn't had. The slogans look so shallow (Gately grants Day the entire surface: "Day's right about how it seems") and then drop off and deepen like the lobster-waters off the North Shore — the same unchanged words disclosing a depth that only shows from inside a practice. This is the anthology's central claim in one image: the cliché's banality is not the opposite of its truth but the surface over it, and irony, which reads only surfaces, is constitutionally unable to see the drop-off. Gately concedes every point Day scores and stakes his life on the part Day can't see.