R. K. Narayan : Irony and humour in the stories

An innate sense of irony, humour and the complete absence of pomposity and pretence is what makes Narayan the writer he is. Narayan's good- humoured irony as a firm ally of serious moral concern creates thoughtful fiction which has its center in Malgudi but has a circumference embracing the entire human condition. "Irony is like shot silk showing different colours as it catches the light at different angles, and Narayan is above all a master of irony". His world may be regional in that it conveys an intimate sense of a given place but it is not parochial or shuttered. His works create a comedy of sadness, suffused with a pure and unaffected melancholy but also lighted with the glint of mockery of both self and others. William Walsh sums up Narayan's art as "exact realism, poetic myth, sadness, perception and gaiety -- It is kind but unsentimental, mocking but uncynical,profoundly Indian but distinctively individual. It fascinates by reason of the authenticity and attractiveness of its Indian setting and engages because of substantial human nature which it implies and embodies".
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