Brother-in-law of Chris Callinan
Brother-in-law
of Chris Callinan
In Brief
Figure of speech. After Myles Crawford finishes
describing Ignatius Gallaher's reportorial coup, he celebrates
the man's influence on later journalists: "He was all their
daddies!" Lenehan picks up the metaphor and then gives the
expression an absurd twist by mentioning Gallaher's family:
"— The father of scare journalism, Lenehan confirmed, and
the brother-in-law of Chris Callinan." He is, more or less,
employing the rhetorical device of zeugma or syllepsis,
in which a verb or a noun governs two or more elements of a
sentence, but with strikingly different meanings.
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Zeugma (ZOOG-muh, from Greek zeugma = yoking,
joining) and syllepsis (sih-LEP-sis, from Greek syn - =
together + lepsis = taking) are sometimes
treated as exact synonyms, sometimes not. Some authorities
maintain that zeugma is a more general term for a single word
governing two or more elements of a grammatical series, while
syllepsis describes the particular case where grammatical
parallelism is accompanied by semantic incongruity. Others,
confusingly, say just the opposite: syllepsis is the more
general kind of parallelism, zeugma the particular case in
which grammar and semantics diverge. Still others make other
fine distinctions which there is no need to explore here.
Whichever term is used for it, the kind of construction in
which grammar and semantics diverge can produce some striking
effects. "Fix the problem, not the blame" (Dave Weinbaum);
"Rend your heart, and not your garments" (Joel); "he was
alternately cudgelling his brains and his donkey" (Dickens' Oliver
Twist); "He carried a strobe light and the
responsibility for the lives of his men" (O'Brien's The
Things They Carried). Sometimes the difference of
meanings can be great enough to inspire laughter or a sense of
total absurdity: "Kill the boys and the luggage!"
(Shakespeare's Henry V); "stain her honour, or her new
brocade" (Pope's The Rape of the Lock); "Time flies
like an arrow––fruit flies like a banana" (Groucho Marx).
Anyone who becomes aware of this device will begin seeing it
everywhere. While thinking about writing this note, I
encountered two uses in the Washington Post within
five minutes: "Those memories [of rich cheese] stick with me,
along with the cholesterol"; "The collapses [of houses] spread
debris––and anxiety––for more than a dozen miles along the
Cape Hatteras National Seashore."
Lenehan's use, "The father of scare journalism...and
the brother-in-law of Chris Callinan," does not strictly
meet the rhetorical definitions because father and
brother-in-law are different words. But much the same
principle is at work, and the sentence achieves an effect much
like the ones quoted above. Expecting another metaphorical use
of familial relationships, the hearer is shocked to discover
that the brother-in-law is a literal one. Stuart
Gilbert flagged this as an instance of zeugma and I am
inclined to agree with him, especially since I picture Joyce
hovering at his side offering suggestions about the novel's
use of rhetorical figures.
Robert
Seidman finds Gilbert's attribution "a little strained
for the definition" and proposes applying the term zeugma to a
different sentence in Aeolus: "We are the boys
of Wexford / Who fought with heart and hand."
He also identifies an instance of syllepsis in the chapter
(though his differentiation of the two terms is very hard to
follow), when Myles Crawford says that Ignatius Gallaher "Gave
it to them on a hot plate, ...the whole bloody
history." Metaphorical and literal senses again are
involved here, as Seidman notes, but this example seems more
than a little strained, because "Gave" is not being applied in
the same grammatical way: "history" is its direct object and
"on a hot plate" is a prepositional phrase. Saying "He gave
them the whole bloody history on a hot plate" does not involve
grammatical parallelism, so the semantic divergence seems
beside the point. But perhaps I am missing Seidman's point.
