Margalit Fox channels Dorothy Parker?

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Aug 14, 2012, at 6:50 PM, Larry Horn wrote:

> On Aug 14, 2012, at 9:12 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>
>> At 8/14/2012 08:37 PM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>>> On Aug 14, 2012, at 5:24 PM, Laurence Horn wrote, on Margalit Fox:
>>>
>>>> "The advice she offered Cosmopolitan's readers on winning the
>>> right friends and influencing the right people was squarely in the
>>> tradition of Dale Carnegie, if less vertically inclined."
>>>>
>>>> LH, wishing *all* NYT obituary writers had the advantage of
>>> training in linguistics like the artful Ms. Fox
>>>
>>> she's definitely the Death Notice Star at the NYT.
>>
>> I didn't realize that -- I don't often vet the bylines for
>> obituaries.  (The best I can do is often recognize Natalie Angier's
>> style/choice of topics on the Science pages; viz. today.)  And
>> prolific and focused -- her c. vitae, at
>>
> http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/f/margalit_fox/index.html,
>> shows many.  Including one line I remember relishing:  "Ms. Zepos was
>> an international authority on the buying, selling, making and above
>> all the almost transcendental experience of eating cheese."
>
> There's a nice one she wrote for Jim McCawley in 1999 that you can find
> by searching the Margalit Fox site, or directly at
> http://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/14/arts/james-d-mccawley-linguist-who-stirred-a-rift-dies-at-61.html
>
> She doesn't scant his accomplishments in developing generative semantics =
> or in preparing pigs' ears in garlic sauce.

Fox is also cited entertainingly in a Times piece on writing obits, discussed here:

http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/obits/

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