So when did it hit you that the 20th century might be maxed out on irony? Just this fall, when Fox TV put on a quiz show called "Greed"? This past spring, when Kurt Andersen's novel, "Turn of the Century," presented characters whose deviousness takes the form of "jolly candor about every mixed motive"? Last year, when in the final episode of "Seinfeld" the characters end up in a jail cell re-enacting the show's first episode? Then again, maybe it was when you read "The Sun Also Rises," where Nick and his buddy Bill riff over breakfast about "irony and pity"—a phrase from a review of what was then the novel du jour, "The Great Gatsby." " 'Ask her if she's got any jam,' Bill said. 'Be ironical with her.' 'Have you got any jam?'
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