Notes & asides.(Letter to the Editor)

Memo to: WFB From: Dorothy McCartney

We've been getting some mail, some quite interesting, asking you to expand on your letter published in the New York Times. To remind you, here is that part of your letter about which these readers are curious:

 
   The reviewer closes down even on acts 
   of imagination that sustain the narrative. 
   "Gus, a young deep-cover agent 
   who jokingly calls Oakes 'Dad.'" But 
   you see, in the preceding novel, Gus 
   appears on the scene precisely as the 
   son of Blackford. They are engaged 
   in an extensive CIA operation in the 
   Soviet Union. Obviously, he called 
   him "Dad." In the spy world, if a 
   young American visitor undertakes 
   an imposture as the son of a senior 
   American visitor, he is going to call 
   him Dad. If he continues to call him 
   that in a subsequent novel, is that a 
   joke? Or even jokey? But it is nice that 
   Mr. Rubin regrets the end of the series, 
   even if he rejects my antonomasia. 

Memo to: Dorothy From: WFB

Dorothy: The episode takes me back 30 years. I quote the relevant passage from my book, Overdrive, pages 49-52.

A dreadful episode, though I acknowledge that my more disreputable friends found it awfully funny. It was several years ago and I was on the Merv Griffin program to announce the publication of my most recent book, which I attempt routinely to turn into a national holiday. The other guests certainly completed the spectrum. They were Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Murray--after Terpsichore, the principal sponsors of modern dance; a young woman--a movie producer; and-well, here is how I wrote it in my column: "... a rock-ballad singer, envelopingly warm, talented Pat Boone-type who sings songs about father-son relationships."

My office, confused by the balance of my text and unable to reach me as I had flown off to the Fiji Islands, cut out the word "type" so as to leave it as, merely, "Pat Boone." This was consistent with the balance of the column, in which, secure in the knowledge that such a literary convention existed, I had referred only to "Pat Boone," even as one might write, say, "The Californians that year elected a Robin Hood-type as governor. The moment Robin Hood reached Sacramento, he came out for a wild program of redistribution...." I didn't know that that device was called "antonomasia," as Hugh Kenner wrote to inform me.