SOURCE: “In a State of Irony,” in Times Literary Supplement, October 27, 2000, p. 23.

In the following review, MacFarlane finds Demonology to be “an uneven collection,” despite the presence of several strong stories in the book.

At one point in Todd Solondz's 1998 film Happiness, a female novelist is talking to her sister on the telephone, while her bronzed and unclad lover lifts weights. “You know, people put New Jersey down,” she tells her sister. “None of my friends can actually believe I live here, but they just don't get it—I'm living in a state of irony.” New Jersey, dubbed the Garden State in a fit of bucolic irony by its tourist board, provided the location and the title for Rick Moody's depressing first novel, Garden State (1993). His second, The Ice Storm (1994), presented the decay of the suburban ideal in 1970s New England; Ang Lee turned it into a bleakly...