Provide a close reading of the following paragraph: "And as for a coincidence in books there is something cheap and sentimental about the device; it can't help always seeming aesthetically gimcrack. . . . One way of legitimizing coincidences of course is to call them ironies. . . . I wonder if the wittiest most resonant irony is not just a well brushed well educated coincidence."

A close reading generally involves a careful deconstruction of a paragraph or piece of writing by examining the individual word choices and structure. Because the paragraph you have provided includes omissions, my reading may not take into account any nuances that could be inferred from the omitted sections. However, assuming that you do indeed want a close reading of what you have provided, I will deconstruct it for you and explain my reasoning so that you will be able to apply it to further sections of the novel, if necessary.
The structure of the first sentence is unusual: beginning with "And" suggests an afterthought, but the privileging of "a coincidence" belies that, as it forces the attention to "a coincidence" at once. The phrasing seems clunky, which underlines what the author is saying; there is "something cheap" about devices which, like "a coincidence in books," are overly deliberate—indeed, he describes them as "aesthetically gimcrack."
The word "gimcrack" here is especially damning. We may never have heard the word before: it is a colloquialism, a manufactured and seemingly unsuitable word just like the coincidences under discussion. It is not "aesthetically" what we expect, and it is not pleasing to the ear. However, the sentence structure legitimizes its use.
This anticipates the author's next suggestion: that "one way of legitimizing coincidences" may be "to call them ironies." The author's tone makes it clear that he does not feel that this really makes the coincidences legitimate at all. He invites the reader to contemplate the question for him or herself.
When the narrator says, "I wonder," the narrative tone becomes deliberately engaging, provoking a response from the reader, a reciprocal pondering of the question. "What is irony?" the paragraph asks us. Is "the wittiest, most resonant irony" something "well brushed" and "well educated"? That is, is irony always manufactured, a "device," something that has been designed? The author's stance appears to be—and he invites us to agree with him—that there is no such thing as a true coincidence.