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 Kenneth R. Berman (September 13, 1998)
Kevin Cullen (November 22, 1998)
Osha Gray Davidson (May 21, 1995)
Alan Dershowitz (February 18, 1996)
Mark Feeney (June 16, 1998)
Mark Feeney (December 3, 1998)
Mark Feeney (March 22, 1995)
Jeff Jacoby (February 14, 1995)
Joyce Maguire Pavao (January 14, 1997)
Katherine A. Powers (February 23, 1997)
Bob Ryan (March 8, 1996)
George Scialabba (March 15, 1998)
David M. Shribman (December 8, 1998)
David M. Shribman (October 11, 1998)
David M. Shribman (February 24, 1998)
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Kenneth Berman. September 13, 1998
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Kenneth Berman is chair of the litigation department at the Boston law firm of Sherin & Lodgen.
He is also the former chairman of the Boston Bar Association's litigation section. In a Boston Sunday Globe
article in September, 1998, Berman was quoted as saying:
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"True statements are always legally accurate,
but legal accuracy is not always the truth."
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Kevin Cullen. November 22, 1998
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In a front-page article titled "For BBC's Cooke at 90, Reporting is Ageless," Kevin Cullen
wrote of the legendary Alistair Cooke:
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"Through more than a half-century of work that was
remarkable for its simultaneous simplicity and erudition,
Cooke became America's most admired Englishman
and England's best-loved American."
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Osha Gray Davidson. May 21, 1995
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In an article on gun control, Osha Gray Davidson, a writer and gun control advocate, offered
this penetrating observation about the nation's number one gun lobby:
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"Until recently people thought of
the NRA as a hunting and sporting group
that did a little lobbying on the side.
Now it's thought of as a lobbying group
that does a little hunting and sporting on the side."
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Alan Dershowitz. February 18, 1996
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Just prior to the 1996 New Hampshire primary, Republican candidate Pat Buchanan accepted the resignation
of one of his top aides, a man who on a number of occasions had reportedly shared the stage with members of the
Aryan Nation, a known hate group. In an article by Robert A. Jordan, Alan Dershowitz was quoted as saying
about Buchanan:
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"There have been men close to power
with no extreme views,
and there have been men with extreme views
that were not close to power.
But we've never had a candidate with
such extreme views and so close to power."
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Dershowitz said he based his comment on the findings of the Anti-Defamation League of B'Nai B'rith, which had been monitoring
Buchanan for decades. He minced no words when he concluded, "He has a history of forty years of bigotry."
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Mark Feeney. June 16, 1998
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In "The Blount Edge," an article on writer Roy Blount, Jr., Mark Feeney discovered that one of Blount's early intellectual
heroes was the legendary American writer, A. J. Liebling. Feeney then piggy-backed on a famous Liebling line to write of Blount:
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"Blount's preeminence among contemporary humorists
has for some time allowed him to boast
(even if he's too modest to)
that he can write funnier than
anyone who can write smarter
and smarter than anyone
who can write funnier."
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If you're not familiar with the Liebling quote that inspired this line, you can find it in another section of this site,
Chiasmus in the New Yorker. The following quote by Feeney also
appears in the New Yorker page of this site, but I'm including it here as well because it originally appeared in the
Globe. Below I'll also speculate on the original quote that might have inspired the line.
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Mark Feeney. December 3, 1998
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In 1998, David Remnick became the fifth editor in the 73-year history of The New Yorker.
Remnick originally discovered the magazine as a youth in his dentist father's waiting room, and became enthralled
by the publication. Hired as a staff writer in 1992, he produced over 100 byline pieces over the next six years.
In 1998, the 40-year-old became the youngest editor in the magazine's history. In an article titled "The New Yorker's
Boyish Wonder," Mark Feeney wrote:
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"It was Storybook 101:
Boy meets magazine;
magazine gets boy;
boy gets magazine."
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Feeney's line captured the essence of the story. Reading the line, I wondered if Feeney was familiar with
Jack Woodford's summary of the typical plot of Hollywood movies:
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"Boy meets girl.
Girl gets boy into pickle.
Boy gets pickle into girl."
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Mark Feeney. March 22, 1995
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In April, 1995, a "Special Hollywood Issue" of Vanity Fair magazine appeared on the stands,
with a dramatic fold-out cover featuring ten lingerie-clad Hollywood starlets. In a "Literary Life"
column, Mark Feeney offered this assessment of the cover:
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"Fabulous babedom may never be the same.
It's prurience at its most ironic,
irony at its most prurient:
airbrushed decadence."
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Jeff Jacoby. February 14, 1995
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In a Valentine's Day column, Jeff Jacoby writes with great fondness about the
valuable lessons he learned from his parents, including this chiastic maxim
from his mother:
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"Love doesn't grow from
the things somebody else does for you.
It grows from
the things you do for somebody else."
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Unlike the countless numbers of "adult children" who speak with anger and
resentment about their parents, Jacoby comes across as a pretty lucky guy.
He writes: "I was raised by two parents who derived deep satisfaction from
their marriage to each other. During my growing-up years … I had a
ringside seat at a true love story. Of the many gifts my parents gave to me,
that has to rank among the most valuable."
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Joyce Maguire Pavao. January 14, 1997
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In an article on adoption, Joyce Maguire Pavao, a family therapist and adoption specialist, was quoted as saying:
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"Adoption is not about finding children for families,
it's about finding families for children."
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Director of the Center for Family Connections in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Pavao went on to add, "It's a cliche, I know,
but I work very hard, and train people very hard, to do just that. Too often the child gets lost in the legitimate
pain and difficulty the adults are going through."
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Katherine A. Powers. February 23, 1997
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Writer and critic Katherine A. Powers offers her reflections and musings on a regular basis in the weekly
feature, "My Back Pages." Early in 1997, she observed:
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"The whole point of art, after all, is to make
the particular universal
and the universal particular—
while at the same time expressing the ambiguities
and complexities of the human condition."
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Bob Ryan. March 8, 1996
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Chiasmus can involve the use of numbers as well as words or phrases, as this Bob Ryan line demonstrates:
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"Padilla is a 1 with overtones of a 2,
while Travieso is a 2 with overtones of a 1."
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If you're a sports fan, you immediately know what Ryan means in this assessment of Edgar Padilla and Carmelo Travieso,
the two guards on the 1996 University of Massachusetts basketball team. For those who require a translation, I'll
let Ryan explain it himself: "Padilla is a point guard, or floor leader, who can also shoot and take it to the hole.
Travieso is a hired gun type of shooter who is not struck dumb when the coach asks him to bring the ball up."
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George Scialabba. March 15, 1998
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In a review of Linda Simon's A Life of William James, book critic George Scialabba offers this
chiastic assessment of James:
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"And although he was perhaps not
superhumanly charming or heroicically good,
it's hard to think of any among his fellow immortals
as charming as James who were also as good,
or any as good who were also as charming."
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David M. Shribman. December 8, 1998
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During the 1998 impeachment hearings, David M. Shribman, the Globe's Washington Bureau chief,
noted that the growing support for impeachment among House republicans was occurring "at the very moment
of a serious leadership vacuum on Capitol Hill," with no one really in charge. Speaker Newt Gingrich
had resigned, but hadn't yet formally left his office, and Robert Livingston had been selected as the new
Speaker, but hadn't yet assumed the role. He made his point with this observation (note the two
separate examples of chiasmus):
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"Often, drifters and the dissolute say
they're between jobs.
The problem with the House speakership is the opposite:
The job is between people.
Gingrich has the job but can't exercise its power.
Livingston has power but won't exercise it
because he doesn't have the job."
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David M. Shribman. October 11, 1998
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Writing about John Glenn's return to the astronaut ranks at age 77, David M. Shribman observed:
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"Glenn, who has led the life of his times,
is having the time of his life."
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David M. Shribman. February 24, 1998
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In a 1998 piece on Ralph Reed, the former director of the Christian coalition, David M. Shribman noted
Reed's penchant for always wearing white shirts. Juxtaposing Reed's sartorial tastes with his political
acumen, Shribman added:
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"His shirts are hot white
and his mind is white hot."
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