WHY DIDN'T ROB NEN CHOOSE BOB?

Have a palindromic New Year (Richard Lederer, Jan. 9, 2003, Jewish World Review)

In the loopy universe of plaindromes you'll find everything from the primordial MADAM, I'M ADAM (Adam's introduction of himself, in English, of course - how convenient - to Eve, the mother of all palindromes), to the epiphanous WON TON? NOT NOW, to the elegant A MAN, A PLAN, A CANAL, PANAMA, to the political STAR COMEDY BY DEMOCRATS, to the hiply contemporary MEN, I'M EMINEM, to the sinister NO, I TAIL A TERRORIST, SIR - OR RETALIATION!, to the wifty, wiggy, loopy, lunatic GO HANG A SALAMI; I'M A LASAGNA HOG, to the astonishingly long yet coherent DOC, NOTE, I DISSENT. A FAST NEVER PREVENTS A FATNESS. I DIET ON COD.

Alistair Reid expresses what may be the very heart of the fascination for matters palindromic: "The dream which occupies the tortuous mind of every palindromist is that somewhere within the confines of the language lurks the Great Palindrome, the nutshell which not only fulfills the intricate demands of the art, flowing sweetly in both directions, but which also contains the Final Truth of Things."

Palindromania is not a disorder but, rather, an evolutionary, passionate effort to cobble letters into order and truth. I say "evolutionary" because I believe that in our species is evolving a heightened wonderment at and facility with the universe of letters. We are getting better at making the alphabet dance.

The greatest palindrome of all time was used by Roger Angell as the title for his New Yorker essay about the 1986 World Series: Not so, Boston.

Despite this unfortunate piece, Mr. Angell's only competition for greatest baseball writer of all time is Red Smith, though--with the possible exception of Smith's piece, Miracle at Coogan's Bluff--this, from Updike's Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu, remains the best paragraph ever written about sport:

Like a feather caught in the vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs-hurriedly, unsmilingly, head down as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of. He didnt tip his cap. Though we thumped, wept and chanted, "We want Ted," for minutes after he hid in the dugout, he did not come back. Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immesne open anguish, a wailing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 9, 2003 11:06 AM