lapsedmodernist | finally, the ontogenesis of irony (Reply)

I've been really immersed into this book I've been reading for the last few days--"Mating" by Norman Rush. It's intersting in many ways, not least of which is the fact that the mind that concocted this nameless female narrative is a male one. The female character is hyperanalytical and hyperintellectual; I identify with her strongly. But did the author succesfully create a complex smart female character, or did he interpollate certain feminine stereotypes into this matrix of an analytical gender-free (or male) character and is that what I am identifying with?
Regardless...the thing that I really liked...At one point, one of the characters makes an allysion to "a school of thought, a heresy from the madhouse of heresies in the ningth centry, that says God is good and is in control of every individual thing that happens, every event, but that unfortunately the devil is in control of timing. Hence, gaffes. Hence the actually existing world." I would add, hence irony. What a great idea! God is in chanrge of what happens, but the devil is in charge of when it happens. The content is fixed, but the execution can be manipulated to alter it entirely. And why is it that God is capitalized in literature, and the devil has a definite article but no capitalization; assumedly they are part of the same canon.