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Ironists of a Vanished Empire. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Its hallmark [was] a profound skepticism about the power of government—any government or, for that matter, economic system—to reform human life. In Austro-Modernist fiction and poetry, irony—an irony less linked to satire (which posits the possibility for reform) than to a sense of the absurd—is thus the dominant mode. The writer’s situation is perceived not as a mandate for change…but as an urgent opportunity for probing analysis of fundamental desires and principles.
Sounds about right to me.
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