Cleverness is endearing if it comes with bashfulness and exuberant playfulness

 (otherwise it's annoying). This may - or may not - be an example:

The man who’d introduced them didn’t much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times. One never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did one. - David Foster Wallace. 

Anyway I like it. Or rather, I can't get rid of it. The pointlessness of the recurring words keep ringing in my head, banging around from one wall to the other like a bad echo. It is strangely similar to obsession.