I think I would explode in flames of irony if I were to option an idea that I was satirizing in a novel.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There are elements of irony in my work, of course.
My book has a very simple surface, but there are layers of irony and paradox all the way through it.
I think, in a written novel, the way in which you play with the readers' emotion or the way in which you engage the readers' emotions can be very indirect. You could come at it through irony or comedy, etcetera, and you could capture people's sympathies and feelings kind of by stealth if you like.
I'm most interested in finding the strangeness and irony in reality. That's my forte.
Reading 'Youth in Revolt' might have ruined my career because suddenly I wanted to abandon all the emotional truth of something and just go out far on a literary limb with completely implausible things that relied completely on voice and humor. And what saved me is realizing that I couldn't do that very well.
Irony is a great tool to deal with things. It's an intellectualization, a way to go above things, which can work.
I think of my novels as entertainments.
I don't have a constituency, and I'm not autobiographical in any way. I write these deeply moral books in a country which would prefer irony to anything with a moral tone.
I was not interested in irony; I wanted to emphasize the primacy of the idea in making art.
I saw novelists as being admirable people and I thought... I thought... maybe, one day, I could be one of them.