More early "Murphy-ish" citations (UNCLASSIFIED)

[sagehen]

And didn't Poe write of the Imp of the Perverse, a similar sort of malign
element in the world we inhabit?
AM

on 1/8/08 2:08 PM, Shapiro, Fred at Fred.Shapiro at YALE.EDU wrote:

> Larry beat me to the punch in making this point.  Complaining that you had a
> bad day in which everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong is very
> different from the Murphy's Law proverb.  I even distinguish between
> statements that, in some limited area such as "at sea" or "the production of a
> magical effect for the first time in public," anything that can go wrong will,
> and statements of universal applicability.  What is striking about the early
> magic citations is that some of them refer to "the malignity of matter" or
> "the depravity of inanimate objects," making them, in my view, plausible
> influences on the later engineering/scientific/aviation vector of "Murphy's
> Law."
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Laurence
> Horn [laurence.horn at YALE.EDU]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 1:50 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: More early "Murphy-ish" citations (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
> I think we need to distinguish the episodic ones (like the first two
> and the last) from the timeless/proverbial ones (most of the others),
> with only the latter being true precursors of Murphy.  It's
> conceivable that the episodic ones were intended to allude to a
> pre-existing proverb or dictum, but it's far from certain.
>
> LH
>
> At 11:33 AM -0600 1/8/08, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC wrote:
>> Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
>> Caveats: NONE
>>
>>
>>
>> _The Friendly Arctic: The Story of Five Years in Polar Regions_ By
>> Vilhjalmur Stefansson  NY: MacMillan 1921. page 594
>>
>> "It seemed, too, that everything that could possibly go wrong did go
>> wrong and that every chance was decicded against us." [Google books full
>> view]
>>
>> _Inside Europe_ By John Gunther NY: Harper, 1938 p. 330
>> "Everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong."  [Goggle Books
>> Snippet View -- check against hard copy]
>>
>> _The Television Program: Its Direction and Production_ By Edward
>> Stasheff, Rudy Bretz New York: Hill and Wang, 1962 p. 175
>> "By the Law of Inverse Probabilities, which states that anything that
>> can possibly go wrong will, . . ." [Goggle Books Snippet View -- check
>> against hard copy]
>>
>> _The Butcher; the ascent of Yerupaja_ by John Sack;  New York: Rinehart,
>> 1952.  p. 13
>> "It goes like this: anything that can possibly go wrong, does. "
>> [Goggle Books Snippet View -- check against hard copy.  The phrase
>> "possibly go wrong" appears 5 times in the book; most are not visible
>> with Google books]
>>
>> _The Sackbut_ v.1:6-9 (1920/21)p. 351
>> "If they can possibly go wrong you can be sure they will." [Goggle Books
>> Snippet View -- check against hard copy]
>>
>>
>> _Writing and Producing the Radio Play_ By Carl Alfred Buss [Thesis].
>> Madison, WI:  Univ of WI, 1933 p. 5.
>> "It always seems that on my busiest days everything that can possibly go
>> wrong does."  [Goggle Books Snippet View -- check against hard copy]
>>
>> _The Beloved Woman_ By Kathleen Thompson Norris.  Garden City, NY:
>> Doubleday, Page & Co., 1921.  p. 190
>> "She was alert, serious, authoritative; her manner expressed an anxious
>> certainty that everything that could possibly go wrong was about to do
>> so." [Google books full view]
>> Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
>> Caveats: NONE
>>
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