It is well known that I know nothing about the craft of writing in any formal way. I say so myself-constantly. Being an editorial director, however, has its demands and duties. I must answer letters from readers, for instance, and take into account any unhappiness they may have with stories and editorial policy. And that means I am sometimes forced to think about writing techniques.
That brings me to the subject at hand, the matter of the use of irony by writers.
In the March 1984 issue, I discussed satire. The two are often lumped together, and, in fact, sometimes confused and treated as though they were synonymous. They are not!
Satire, as I explained, achieves its purpose of castigating the evils of humanity and society by exaggeration. It puts those evils under a magnifying glass with the intention of making them clearly visible.
Irony does it differently. You can get a hint from the fact that "irony" is from a Greek word meaning "dissimulation." An ironist must pretend, and the classic ironist was Socrates, who in his discussions with others would relentlessly pretend ignorance and ask all kinds of naive questions designed to trap an overconfident adversary into rashly taking positions that then proved to be indefensible under further naive questioning by Socrates.
Naturally, Socrates was not ignorant and the questions were n ot naive, and his method of procedure is known as "Socratic irony." You may well believe that those who suffered under his bland lash did not grow to love him, and I suspect he fully earned his final draught of hemlock.
Socrates set the fashion for irony for all time. He pretended to be ignorant when he was actually piercingly intelligent, and ever since then, ironists have pretended to believe and say the opposite of what they wanted the reader to understand. Instead of exaggerating the evils they are denouncing, they reverse them and call them good.
The satirist induces laughter by his exaggeration, the ironist induces indignation by his reversal.
The satirist is often good-natured, the ironist tends to be savage and bitter. Satire is a comparatively mild technique whose purpose is easily grasped. Irony is a difficult technique whose point is frequently missed, and the ironist may find he is holding a two-edged sword and is himself badly gashed.
Most satirists find themselves indulging in irony sometimes, and I know exactly where I first encountered irony. I was reading Charles Dickens's Pickwick Papers for the first time (as a pre-teener) and in chapter two, I encountered Dickens's description of Tracy Tupman's zeal at "general benevolence." Said Dickens, "The number of instances...in which that excellent man referred objects of charity to the houses of other members for left-off garments or pecuniary relief is almost incredible."
I was astonished. I thought to myself that it wasn't very kind of Mr. Tupman to send poor people to other members instead of giving them something himself, so how could he be benevolent? And after a while, the light dawned. He wasn't benevolent. In fact, I decided indignantly, he was a stingy bum, and my liking for him was strictly limited for the rest of the book and ever since. I did not know that what I had just read was irony, but I understood the concept from that time on, and I eventually learned the word.
If you want a savage and prolonged bit of writing with a great deal of irony in it, I refer you to Mark Twain's The Mysterious Stranger, which was not published till after he was safely dead. I warn you, though, it's not pleasant reading. It certainly makes plain, however, Twain's bitter feelings about humanity and the assorted evils that seemed (to Twain, at any rate) to be inextricably bound up with it. And it may, for a time at least, embitter you with humanity, too.
Even that, however, must take second place to the all-time high in caustic irony-a pamphlet by Jonathan Swift, published about 1730, entitled " A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents or Country and for Making them Beneficial to the Public. " Swift served in Ireland and could see first-hand, and with enormous indignation, the manner in which the English brutally and callously ground the Irish into helpless and hopeless poverty.
He therefore pointed out that since the only thing the Irish were allowed to produce and keep for their own use were their children, it would supply them with needed money, and others with needed food, if those Irish children were sold in order to be fattened and slaughtered for sale at the butcher's. With an absolutely straight face, and with incredible ingenuity, he pointed out all the advantages that would accrue from such cannibalism.
If anything could possibly have evoked shame and even reform from those responsible for the Irish plight, that pamphlet would have done it. Undoubtedly, many of those who read the pamphlet were shamed; some may even have altered their attitudes and behavior. By and large, however, the exploitation of the Irish continued unchanged for nearly two more centuries and the light that casts on humanity is not a good one.
And yet, you know, not everyone has a "sense of irony," which is by no means the same as a "sense of humor." I firmly believe that one can have one and not the other. It is possible to be confused by a pretense to believe the opposite of what you believe, as I was for a few minutes by Dickens's description of Tupman as benevolent. Of course, I caught on, but if I had lacked a sense of irony, I suppose I wouldn't have.
There were, actually, good and kindly people who read Swift's pamphlet with indignation, not at the mistreatment of the Irish, but at Swift's apparently callous and immoral advocacy of cannibalism. They thought he meant it, and denounced him with immeasurable vehemence.
And that finally brings me to Asimov's for sometimes what we publish contains irony, and if irony is hard to handle even for the absolute master of the art, good old Swift, you can understand that it is a slippery tool for lesser mortals.
In the February 1984 issue, Tom Rainbow wrote a "Viewpoint" article entitled, "Sentience and the Single Extraterrestrial," that dealt with the requirements for such things as intelligence, sentience, and self- awareness. He described the kind of extraterrestrials that might, or might not, possess such things.
From the title alone, you can tell that he is writing in the humorous mode, and indeed, when you read his essay, you will find that he is saying perfectly serious things in a deliberately funny way.
In one place, he uses irony. Having talked of the requirements of self-awareness in terms of brain/body ratios, he points out that women's brains are smaller than men's but so are their bodies, leaving the brain/body ratio nearly the same in both sexes. (Actually, if there's an advantage it's on the side of women.) With heavy irony, he says, "this reasoning leads to the somewhat startling conclusion that women must be self-aware."
How can one believe that Rainbow really thinks the conclusion is "startling"? He's using ironic dissimulation. He's pretending to think it's startling (and italicizing "self-aware" as a typographical indication of astonishment) in order for you to understand thoroughly that this is not startling and that people who consider women inferior beings are ignorant, and even stupid.
And to make it even plainer, he puts himself in the ironic position of these ignoramuses and says in the next sentence, "Heck, guys, if even girls can be self-aware, then there's hope for Giant Dill Pickles." The use of the adolescent term "Heck," and the equally adolescent "guys," and the shift from "women" to italicized "girls" all show that he is not speaking in his own persona and that he has nothing but contempt for the attitude. He is relying, poor fellow, on his readers having a sense of irony.
Well, they do-by and large.
But there are always exceptions, and a few women have written indignant letters to point out that this was insulting. One said that it wasn't funny or cute.
No, indeed, Swift's advocacy of cannibalism wasn't funny or cute, either, but he was trying for something else.
To be sure, Swift's entire pamphlet was aimed at his target and Rainbow was merely bringing in the matter of women's brains as a side issue, and perhaps if he were doing it again, he might decide it would be more judicious not to indulge. But please, women, the man is on your side and tried to show it by the use of that two-edged sword, irony. You may think the irony didn't work, but that doesn't make
Rainbow any enemy of womankind.