Jon Winokur's "The Big Book of Irony" is one of those books that is just exploding with tidbits that make you want to interrupt your reading and share what you've just read with a friend, a neighbor, or well, anybody.
Ostensibly the book is about Irony - what is is, what it is not, how to recognize it, and how to use it properly. But the problem with irony is that it is the statement of one thing while being understood to mean the opposite, that opposite meaning being the intent all along. Thus, the title of this book implies it is a "big" book when, in fact, it is quite small, which was the intent in calling it, ironically, a big book. One easily ends up in verbal or visual loops and stands a good chance of mistaking coincidence for irony or irony for sarcasm.
One of my favorite quotes in the book is from Bronislaw Malinowski:
I once talked to an old cannibal who, hearing of the Great War raging in Europe, was most curious to know how we Europeans managed to each such huge quantities of human flesh. When I told him the Europeans did not eat their slain foes, he looked at me with shocked horror and asked what sort of barbarians we were, to kill without any real object.
The book includes examples of visual irony such as flame decals on a mini-van or Michael Jackson's multiply-defaced face.
It has a section of ironic events reported in the media such as the executive at the Salt Lake Tribune in charge of implementing cost-cutting measures who was himself fired, reportedly as a "cost cutting measure."
It even includes a self-test to help you measure your own irony potential but it, of course, is also ironic in that both the highest and lowest scores indicate the same thing.
Definitely a fun book to have on your bookshelf or to give to an English major.
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