I don't know that irony doesn't work here, but it's hard to tell--I get and appreciate sly remarks here that I don't necesarily post to acknowledge I appreciated. I've heard many people mention that they get taken in the wrong way, accidentally offend, by e-mail. Tone is tricky to convey when writing conversationally.

   Anyway, it's an interesting thing to note these breakthrough bits--things that add a little life. There are songs I don't enjoy because they seem essayistic, have no imagery. One of my favorite breakthrough moments in history is a paragraph in Gogol's Dead Souls describing an overgrown garden, and summing up that it was beautiful in the way things are when nature adds the finishing strokes to what people have tried to arrange. It's a fresh and unconventional observation.

    I also love that in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra they had planned to go out one night and "note the qualities of people"--a perfectly observed, timeless cheap date, fit for kings and queens, and just exactly the sort of thing couples do. People who aren't in love would never think of doing that. I take it that you're talking about that sort of thing, how a true detail lends force and credibility to the whole.