Word: wryness
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These ideas are not meant to be taken altogether seriously; Leib's artistry in creating a fine one-act play, and the softpedalled wryness of the pretentious program notes (including quotes from Kafka, Steiner, and Beckett, as well as Wittgenstein) only enhance the subtlety of what amounts to an elaborate parody of an absurdist drama. This is not to say that Leib does not believe in an absurdist view of the universe--he clearly does. He just doesn't believe in writing a play about it. His focus is not on the ideas themselves, which are, as Terry should...
...What they don't know won't hurt them, as my father would say," the other man says with his wryness. "I'd like to know myself. It's like...what's the next chapter, you know? They're probably edited, you know? That's what I mean. WHO KNOWS? I mean, here-we-sit-broken-hearted-and-for-all-we-know-the-war-is-started. It seems like we're kind of like...rabbits...
...Wryness was his real profession; by the 1950s, when he was editing Punch, it was clear that Muggeridge was one of the saltiest essayists of his time. He went public on English television, as a panelist of dependable perversity. Then he surprised his audience with a book called Jesus Rediscovered (1969), and it became known that-contrariness to the contrary-he was a practicing Christian...
This reduction of ideas to platitudes, this perpetual emotional filibuster relying on psychic sensationalism and insights as adaptable and obvious as children's blocks that are numbered and lettered, is depicted, on the whole, with wryness. The warning lies beneath the mockery...
That satisfying fantasy is sadly absent from Condominium-and so is the author's customary wryness. In its place is a self-righteousness that bombinates at needless length on environmental matters, foolishness and greed...