I was reading a book of book reviews by Terry Eagleton in Border's yesterday. He presents the same idea in several separate reviews: that these writers (Bloom, Gayatri Spivak, Steiner, etc...) cannot tolerate irony. That the least whiff of irony or humor would make their projects implode. I agree.

Thinking of certain poets who are exclusively ironical, a little later on, it occured to me that their projects could tolerate no break from irony. That their projects too must be hermetically sealed, in this case not from irony but from sincerity or seriousness.