The Happy Man”
This is a story specifically constructed for irony. A man wakes up one day feeling overwhelmed by a sense of happiness for absolutely no reasons. Too much of anything can eventually become a burden and such is the intensely ironic case even happiness is the thing one has too much of.
“By a Person Unknown”
This is a serial killer story with an ironic twist that is truly unique within this sub-genre. It is composed as a police procedural and becomes a portrait of obsession in its portrayal of a detective slowly going mad from the hopelessly unsolvable case. Ironically, the detective becomes a victim of the serial killer.
“At the Bus Stop”
Another law enforcement officer is at the center of the irony of this story. He is a uniformed officer who remains strangely alienated from the criminal activity taking place around and witnessed by those waiting for the bus. A shocking twist ending has the cop finally moved to action as he takes his service revolver out and fires on the innocent witnesses.
“Half a Day”
The title is purposely ironic. While the action covered in the story does take over place the time period promised in the title, it is a symbolic tale in which an entire long life is lived out during that time frame.
“The Lawsuit”
The irony of the legal situation at the center of this story is so overwhelming that this tale becomes one of the few examples in which the irony is actually commented upon within the story by one its participants. The opening line is an expression of outrage by the first-person narrator’s discovering that he is being sued for maintenance by his father’s widowed second wife. The absurdity of the situation finally becomes too much to bear and he erupts in recognition:
“It’s really the height of irony…that I should be required to pay maintenance to that woman.”
