 | THE THEORY OF IRONY: HOW JESUS LED TO MOON GOLF, BY ERIK VON NORDEN Self-published, 262 pp. August 2015 Buy The Theory of Irony on Amazon Check out The Theory of Irony on Goodreads Visit Erik Von Norden's website Follow Erik Von Norden on Twitter |
THE STORY
Did you ever wonder why so many things – past and present - make so little sense? Why is there an inverse proportion between the size of the print and the importance of the message? Why do washed-up actors and athletes end up as Governors and Congressmen? Why do they pay out millions of tax dollars for anti-smoking campaigns, and to farmers to grow more tobacco? Why did Missouri send thousands of men to fight on opposite sides at the Battle of Vicksburg? Why was it that Pope John XII died while making love with a married woman? Why can't we separate art from obscenity and why, oh why, do armies destroy towns to save them? Erik Von Norden processes the world with an odd, well-caffeinated kind of logic and answers in an eccentric, corkscrewed sort of way. Always funny, sometimes scholarly and with no sacred cows. He calls this eccentric thinking the Theory of Irony.
REVIEWS
"I'm not much of a history buff; however, Von Norden's writing was able to hold my interest. He provided enough dates and details to be informative, used modern examples that I could relate to, and kept the pace going as he moved from period of time to another." -- Charity Rowell-Stansbury, Onmykindle.net
"You might get the idea that The Theory of Irony is a spoof or at least a lampoon. I assure you it is not. It is told by an author who has an eye for the absurdity and just plain goofiness of human behavior and a humorous way of sharing it." -- Mike Siedchlag, Mike's Theatre of the Mind
"The history of man is certainly overflowing with the absurd. Hindsight allows us to see tragic irony in so much of the pattern of historic incongruity. At finish, the point of the book for me finally emerged as the irony in the fact that is impossible to find any consistency in history other than total inconsistency, chaos. Perhaps if I was less stupid I would have concluded that before I reached the end notes, or have I yet missed something deeper?" -- Richard Brunning, Another Space in Time
"You might get the idea that The Theory of Irony is a spoof or at least a lampoon. I assure you it is not. It is told by an author who has an eye for the absurdity and just plain goofiness of human behavior and a humorous way of sharing it." -- Mike Siedchlag, Mike's Theatre of the Mind
"The history of man is certainly overflowing with the absurd. Hindsight allows us to see tragic irony in so much of the pattern of historic incongruity. At finish, the point of the book for me finally emerged as the irony in the fact that is impossible to find any consistency in history other than total inconsistency, chaos. Perhaps if I was less stupid I would have concluded that before I reached the end notes, or have I yet missed something deeper?" -- Richard Brunning, Another Space in Time
ABOUT ERIK VON NORDEN
Erik Von Norden grew up in a town just outside New York City, blessed by a miracle of geography. To the west, the greatest metropolis in the universe boasts the tallest skyscrapers and wonderfully diverse neighborhoods, and to the south lie miles of the splashiest open-surf, wide-sand beaches on the planet. There, fifteen minutes after the end of World War II, two million middle-class New Yorkers paved over hundreds of miles of perfectly good potato farms, bulldozed 10-lane superhighways that stay jammed past midnight, and, cobbled together endless suburban tract houses without uniformity or distinction. It was from there that he meandered, at the age of 17, to the State University at Albany where he had been accepted off the wait list by the skin of his teeth. Albany survives as a political capital, whose heyday came (and went) long ago with the Erie Canal. In this place, Erik found roommates, rented what might euphemistically be called a firetrap and got work in a print shop. Thanks to the state’s lavishly subsidized college system, he scraped together enough money for tuition and subsisted happily enough off macaroni and cheese. Erik found he could sneak into a dive bar on every corner, join a conversation on every porch, and more often than not, a house-party above. At the end of four years, Erik Von Norden got a job as a paralegal, met the woman who would become his wife, and eventually earned a master’s degree in history. Then one day, he walked in and passed the bar exam – without going to law school or a taking prep course – and because of an anachronistic quirk in the system, he ended up as an attorney. He also abstained from alcohol, cigarettes, meat and drugs, parachuted from a small plane, skied the front four at Stowe and tubed the River of Caves in Belize. Nevertheless, these adventures pale in comparison to being married for over 20 years and raising two teenagers. Erik now lives at the far end of civilization – in a small town in northern Vermont, the most rural of all the United States. To get an idea just how far north, and how rural, to take a vacation down in tropical Kennebunkport, Maine requires a four-hour drive generally south. His adjacent county, which borders French Canada, is closer to the North Pole than the Equator. His little house, set deep in the woods off a dirt road, is miles from the nearest pavement. It is a brutally cold but mindlessly beautiful spot, and he loves it.
