"a linguistic trust fall"

16 February 2021: "Irony is a linguistic trust fall. When I write or speak with a double meaning, I fall backwards, hoping you'll be there to catch me. The risks are high: misaimed irony can gravely injure the conversation. But the rewards are high, too: the sublime joy of feeling purely understood, the comfort of knowing someone's on your side. No wonder people through the ages kept trying so hard to write it" --Gretchen McCulloch, Because Internet

Really enjoying this book, which Hannah enthusiastically recommended to me. I am going to use it to help structure my summer class, so I've been thinking about it on a bunch of levels.