Slick Hardin
“The Patented Gate and the Mean Hamburger” ends with the suicide of the protagonist after his wife somehow (never made entirely clear) coerces him into buying a hamburger joint. They purchase the joint from the current owner who shamelessly flirts his way into the wife’s good graces. The irony here is they make this dubious investment from a guy who actually calls himself—with no obvious irony—Slick Hardin.
The Patented Gate
The suicide that ends that story is itself quite ironic. The first half of the title is related entirely to the husband, Jeff York, and his pride at installing a brand-new high-tech gate. The story ends with his suicide by means of jumping from the gate to hang himself.
Subtlety
“The Confession of Brother Grimes” is today a story instantly recognizable for its irony. At the time of publication, however, some of its more subtle ironic implications institutions might well have been easily mistaken for expressions of sincerity:
“Then there was Brother Grimes, as good and kind a man as you ever hope to see and a preacher to boot”
Baseball
One has to know some baseball slang to get the irony of the title “Goodwood Comes Back” but this story was written at a time when baseball was the only professional sport in America so most people would have gotten it. The main character is named Luke Goodwood and he briefly becomes a good enough pitcher in the big leagues to appear in the World Series. The phrase “good wood” refers to success at hitting but since Luke is a pitcher the last thing he wants to see is anyone getting some good wood on the ball. Notice that his career is described as “brief.”
Bolton Lovehart
“Circus in the Attic” is an exercise in Freudian literature. It is filled with almost every one of the big themes of psychoanalysis: repression, sublimation, projection and, of course, topping it all, a complexly Oedipal relationship between mother and son. The domineering mother steers the course of the first half-century of profoundly repressive son by living out his unusual name: she puts the bolt on his capacity to love freely with an open heart because she demands complete possession of that herself.
