| PAT: A Biography of Daniel Patrick Moynihan Douglas Schoen New York: Harper & Row, 1979 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN 0-06-013998-6 | 322pp. | HC/BWI | $12.95 | |
| Page 47: | "It was a fortuitous meeting for Reisler; a year later, when Marie and Pat had broken up, Reisler looked her up in New York, and they were subsequently married." |
| This must be a memory slip. Previous paragraphs (as, indeed, does the previous sentence) make it amply clear that Pat was keeping company with Mary Gollogly. |
| Page 125: | "The Harvard community is not one that really embraces an individual, no matter how powerful or important he or she may once have been. It is an anomic community..." |
| Definition problem: Anomic is the adjectival form of anomie, which means "social instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values; also: personal unrest, alienation, and uncertainty that comes from a lack of purpose or ideals". |
| Pages 204-5: | "He left India worried about the changes he had seen—changes trust stirred in him the concerns that he had just described in an article..." |
| I think "trust" is a typo: the phrase probably S/B "changes that stirred in him". |
| Page 277: | "New York City was suffering from 'anomic disintegration' and was filled with the 'dust of individuals'." |
| These words, spoken in 1977, have an eerie resonance for those who experienced the events in New York City on September 11, 2001. Here, "anomic" is used correctly, even though in a phrase that strikes my eye strangely. I'm not sure it was a conscious play on words on Moynihan's part; but I suspect that.1 |
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