Weapon Quotations
McCann, William
Weapon Quotations Quotemanship, by Paul F. Boiler, Jr. Southern Methodist University Press. 454 pp. $7.95. Reviewed by William McCann "Qometimes one wants a quotation ^as a tight-rope walker...
...For example, the author finds The Progressive in August, 1966, quoting President Johnson's 1964 campaign declaration in Akron, Ohio: "We are not going North, . . . and we are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys should be doing for themselves...
...And, of course, there was George Bernard Shaw: "I often quote myself, it adds spice to the conversation...
...The author has found much of his material in recent issues of American journals of opinion, ranging the political spectrum from the National Review to The Progressive...
...Paul F. Boiler, who teaches history at the University of Massachusetts, believes that "quotemanship" as a refined art is a development of the Twentieth Century, and particularly of the 1930's, when the use of quotations to reinforce arguments became standard procedure in American political debate...
...Among liberal quotemen, Boiler gives high rating to I. F. Stone, Milton Mayer, and Arthur M. Schlesin-ger, Jr...
...Confronting one's adversary with embarrassing statements from the past is particularly effective quotemanship...
...One interesting chapter of the book is given to "Quotes and the Campaign of 1964" and another, to "Quotes and L.B.J...
...Polemicists—especially the political practitioners—need quotations most of all...
...To drive a tack he will occasionally pick up a sledge hammer...
...he is fond of statements made by conservatives that help prove his own points...
...He notes that Milton Mayer, writing in The Progressive some years ago, coined the word "contextomy"— the deliberate excision of words and phrases to misrepresent what has been said...
...Reviewed by William McCann "Qometimes one wants a quotation ^as a tight-rope walker wants the touch of a withered twig," Walter Raleigh wrote...
...Boiler deploys his material under such rubrics as "Esteemed Authority Quotes," "Opposition - as - Authority Quotes" (a favorite device, he says, of The Progressive), "Spurious Quotes," "Reversed-Opinion Quotes," "Out-of-Context Quotes," "Awkward Quotes from the Past," and so on, with shades of differences within the larger categories...
...But balanced writers and wavering reviewers are not alone in their need of quotable reassurances...
...and Adlai Stevenson...
...I. F. Stone is a skilled user of adversary-as-authority quotations...
...Sometimes, however, he bogs down with the plethora of subject matter at his disposal...
...He forgets the lesson his book teaches—that pungency, brevity, and relevancy are essential to good quotemanship...
...As for effective "self-quoters," historian Boiler bows to Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr...
...The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose...
...there is also an adversary-as-authority-against-his-own-side quote...
...There is," he pointed out, "not only an adversary-as-authority-for-my-side quote...
...His sympathies are liberal but do not blind him to the adroit quotemanship of William F. Buckley, Jr., H. L. Mencken, and other astute conservative polemicists...
...Boiler analyzes his illustrative quotations in a serious but lively manner, obviously relishing his explorations in the thickets of political disputation...
...This absorbing book is an analysis of how quotations have been used and misused in the United States on forensic, argumentative occasions...
...Boiler says Lyndon Johnson is "the 'quotingest' President ever to occupy the White House...
...On one occasion Johnson neatly quoted Fred Allen: "A conference," Allen said, "is a gathering of important people who singly do nothing but together decide nothing can be done...
...Example: "We made a mistake going in there, but I can't figure out any way to get out without scaring the rest of the world"—Senator Richard B. Russell, of Georgia, on Vietnam in 1964...
...It was Buckley who extracted this 1919 quotation from J. M. Keynes: "There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing bases of society than to debauch the currency...
Vol. 32 • February 1968 • No. 2
