The Literary Mind.pdf

100 THE LITERARY MIND
space, Bob Dole becomes the Kansas gunslinger with the big iron on his hip,
who, like his counterpart in the movie Shane, is cool, confident, utterly professional,
wastes no energy, picks his fights, and knows his ground. Something like
this: "Dole is the ranking gunslinger in Dodge-City-on-the-Potomac, rough at
the edges but smooth on the legislative draw. When the sun of deficit negotiations
got in Clinton's eyes, Dole made his move and Clinton never cleared leather.
Hillary Clinton is sure to come running out with her health-care initiative to try
to plug the wound, but Sheriff Clinton is bleeding his heart out on Main Street
U.S.A., and Doc Greenspan at the Fed, with a barely recovering economy to
protect from inflation infection, isn't about to remove the bullet so Clinton can
pull himself up and go spend another ton of money...."
It is not only on the editorial page that such blends are allowed. A lead
sentence on page 1 of The New York Times for May 13, 1993, reads, "An unexpected
surge in wholesale prices last month, the latest of a string of higher price
reports, left many economists and investors wondering whether the inflation
genie was starting to slip out of the bottle." Immediately after reading this newspaper,
I called United Airlines and received the recorded while-you-wait-foran-agent
message, "Now you can tango on down to Rio, with less fancy footwork"—presumably
an ad for a new nonstop flight. "Tango" and "fancy footwork"
come from the source space but "on down to Rio" comes from the target space,
since intercontinental travel is not possible by means of tango. I am told that the
phrase also blends in elements of a Fred Astaire movie about flying on down
to Rio.
THE NATHAN BOOMERANG
In 2 Samuel 12, the prophet Nathan comes to King David. David is a judge, and
Nathan approaches David in that role. Nathan presents David with the case of
a certain rich man and a certain poor man.
The rich man had very many flocks and herds; but the poor man had
nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought:
it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of
his morsel, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like
a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he
was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the
wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man's lamb, and
prepared it for the man who had come to him.
Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said
to Nathan, "As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to