The Death of Irony

The following are two sequential paragraphs from the obituary in the Baltimore Sun of Kingdon Gould Jr., a great-grandson of robber baron Jay Gould:

When asked in 2014 by a Howard County Times reporter what he had learned from his great-grandfather’s life, Mr. Gould said: “So-called financial success is relatively short-lived, and depending on the quality of the people that inherited it, it can all evaporate.”

As a child he lived in a triplex apartment of 20 rooms and eight baths in Manhattan. He attended the Millbrook School and went off to Yale University to major in English literature.