"Murphy's Law" (1955)

[Joel S. Berson]

Wilson, can you tell me more about Paul Dickson and his oeuvre, and explain
the joke?

I have encountered Dickson only briefly, in consulting his 1992 Dickson's
Word Treasury: A Connoisseur's Collection of Old and New, Weird and
Wonderful, Useful and Outlandish Words.  There he reproduces an incorrect
dating from an 1864 biography of Benjamin Franklin -- which was noted as
incorrect in a 1940 article and is given correctly in more recent
biographies and the definitive "Papers of BF."  When I saw the comments
here on the misattribution to Beckett, I wondered about Dickson's general
reliability.

Joel

At 7/11/2005 10:35 PM, you wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM>
>Subject:      Re: "Murphy's Law" (1955)
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Can it truly be the case that I am the only one here familiar with Paul
>Dickson and his oeuvre? If so, please accept my apologies, but I really
>did think that the joke would be obvious.
>
>-Wilson Gray