Books
Grown men, he told himself, in flat contradiction of centuries of accumulated evidence about the way grown men behave, do not behave like this.
— Douglas Adams · So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish
Behind the line May contain spoilers.
Our reading
An editorial interpretation.
A character insists that grown men do not behave a certain way, while the narration points to abundant evidence against him. The aside punctures his reassuring generalization before it can stand. The joke depends on separating what he tells himself from what the narrator observes.
Context reviewed