Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Breaker of Records

On July 5, 1983, Pat Moynihan wrote to the editors of the Guinness Book of Records requesting that he be considered for an entry. The reason, he wrote, was his coining of the word ‘Floccinaucinihilipilificationism,’ which was, he claimed, the longest in the English language. Moynihan had, he conceded, merely added ‘ism’ to an existing word, but with ‘a serious literary purpose: to suggest the pomposity of much contemporary economic forecasting.’ Moynihan had first used the word in a 1981 review for The New Yorker of John Kenneth Galbraith’s memoirs, “A Life In Our Times.” He had, he told the editors, either written (or intended to write) at the time with this request. ‘In either case, I don’t recall receiving an answer.’[1]

Sadly, Moynihan’s papers do not contain a response from the Guinness editors. Nonetheless, he remained proud of the coinage and committed to gaining official recognition for it. He embarked on an ultimately unsuccessful campaign to have it included in the Oxford English Dictionary. As late as 1991, he was writing to his friend William Safire, author of the New York Times Magazine’s “On Language” column, requesting that he use the word in a future publication. Moynihan had, he wrote, ‘three solid citings so far’ and one more, by Safire, would surely clinch it. ‘I don’t have much to leave my grandchild, but he maybe could grow up to learn that his old granddad amounted to something after all.’[2]

Pat Moynihan liked to break records. In February 1974, as U.S. Ambassador to India, he made his first attempt to enter the Guinness Book of Records, for presenting the Indian government with the largest single cheque in the history of banking. The cheque – totalling Rs. 16,640,000,000, or approximately $2,046,700,000 – was written to cancel India’s substantial food aid debts, an ongoing source of tension between the two powers. Moynihan had written to Guinness at the instigation of his son, John – in having this achievement recognised, he wrote, he would win ‘the permanent regard of [his] 14 year old son who at times appears to read nothing else.’ The appeal was successful, and an entry, accompanied by a photograph, appeared in future editions.[3]

The delight Moynihan took in overturning precedents extended to other areas of his life. After his election to the Senate in 1976, for instance, he took a seat on the Finance Committee and enjoyed reminding people that he was the first New York Democrat to serve on it in a century. ‘My predecessor put [Samuel J.] Tilden in nomination for president.’[4] He took similar pride in becoming, in 1993, the first New Yorker to chair that committee since the 1850s.[5] In 1982, he won re-election to the Senate from New York by a margin of over a million votes, boasting that this made him ‘one of the five millionaires of the Senate.’ ‘If you can’t be a millionaire of the other kind, why not be this kind?’ he told the audience at his victory celebrations at the Sheraton Center. ‘In fact, I prefer this kind.’[6]

We could indulge in idle speculation about what, if anything, this impulse reveals about Moynihan’s character. However, we prefer to leave that to others, and will instead turn our attention to the far more important task of devising some feat to get this conference into the Guinness Book of World Records.

All suggestions welcome.




[1] 'Floccinaucinihilipilification' is the 'action or habit of estimating something as worthless.' Letter, DPM to the editors, Guinness Book of World Records, July 5, 1983, papers of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Manuscript Reading Room, Library of Congress Part II, Box 6; Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Floccinaucinihilipilificationism,” The New Yorker, August 10, 1981; 'Floccinaucinihilipilification,' Oxford Dictionaries, <http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/floccinaucinihilipilification>.
[2] Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Steven R. Weisman (ed.), Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary (New York, 2010), 571.
[3] Moynihan, Weisman (ed.), Daniel Patrick Moynihan: Portrait in Letters, 325
[4] Garry Wills, Lead Time: A Journalist’s Education (New York, 2004), 139.
[5] Michael Barone, “A Renaissance Man In The Senate,” in Robert A. Katzmann (ed.), Daniel Patrick Moynihan: The Intellectual In Public Life (Washington, D.C., 2004), 136.
[6] The other four were Alan Cranston of California, John Glenn of Ohio, Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, and Charles H. Percy of Illinois. Maurice Carroll, “Moynihan Wins Overwhelming Victory,” NYT, November 3, 1982

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