 For Authors: June 04, 2025 Issue [#13156] |
This week: Ask Not What Your Antimetabole Can Do Edited by: Max Griffin 🏳️🌈  
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A newsletter "for authors" might attempt any number of things. It might encourage, entertain, or educate. It might irritate, inspire, or intrigue. It might even be practical, purposeful, or prototypical. This one is about a few rhetorical devices (yes, alliteration is one of them) and tries to do some of these things.
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A Tale of Quotes
My "Bio" page on Writing.Com includes the following quote:
The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.
— Pablo Picasso
I was thinking of replacing it with this quote:
I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.
— Richard Feynman
However, being a former professor, I thought I should double-check the quotes for accuracy. You know, find a citation documenting that the authors really did say or write it. That innocent desire launched this tale of the quotes.
It turned out that such a citation doesn't exist for either quote. The first "quote" is almost certainly due David Viscott, whose complete quote is:
The purpose of life is to discover your gift.
The work of life is to develop it.
The meaning of life is to give your gift away.
— David Viscott
Everyone agrees that the second quote sounds like something Feynman might have said, but there is nothing to document he did say it. There is a documented quote that expresses a similar thought:
What is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth.
— Richard Feynman
In both cases, the real quote is arguably better than the one that's splashed all over the interent with an incorrect citation to a famous author. Certainly, the real Viscott quote is more detailed than the internet version. In the case of Feynman, the actual quote is deeper than the internet version, if less facile. It speaks to the necessary connection between doubt and truth in science and suggests that doubt is an aspect of truth. It also evokes thoughts of Einstein's losing battle agaisnt the Uncertainty Principle (another famous quote: "God does not play dice with the universe.") at the legendary Solvay Conference. Indeed, in some ways, the Feynman quote gets at the heart of modernity, while the internet version is just an expression of a preference.
One thing these examples show is that an appeal to authority makes a quote seem more legitimate. Picasso and Feynman are both legendary figures. Attaching their names to a quote adds weight to the sentiment. This is a common rhetorical device--the appeal to authority--and happens all the time. It happens even in cases when the person involved never said anything remotely like the quote. For a famous example, consider this quote:
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
A former President of US and a former Prime Minister of the UK both mistakenly attributed this to Lincoln. On the face of it, it's an attempted rebuttal of the Communist Manifesto which wasn't published in the US until 1871, so it's unlikely Lincoln ever wrote it or even thought anything remotely like it. The real source is a preacher named William Boetcker who wrote it in 1916.
What this reveals is two things. First, that rhetorical devices like "appeal to authority" are effective; and, second, that checking sources is important. The reason that's important gets back to the real Feynman quote, the essential connection between uncertainty and truth. But this tale of the quotes also poses some other questions, ones of particular interest to authors.
The Questions
This newsletter is supposed to be for authors, so it should be more than amusing or annoying anecdotes about "appeal to authority," or "about who said what," or "alliteration." (See what I did there?).
The first question might be "what are rhetorical devices" and "why use them?" (I just did it again.) Okay, that's two questions, but they are connected.
There's another question, though, a deeper one than "who said what?" It's starts with the observation that the second quote--the one attributed to Feynman that he apparently never said--is splashed all over the internet while the real quote is basically ignored, despite being better and deeper. The obvious question is "why is that?"
The answer to the latter question involves two rhetorical devices: Chiasmus and Antimetabole.
The rest of this newsletter is about these three things: rhetorical devices, and two specific ones I just mentioned.
Rhetorical Devices
Rhetorical devices are techniques speakers and authors use to convince an audience. They've been around forever, and examples abound in scripture and prose from ancient times to today. Cicero was famous for his effective oratory, and more of his writings have survived than those of any other Roman author. He fully knew the power of rhetorical devices, writing
Nothing is so incredible that oratory cannot make it acceptable.
Cicero, in Paradoxa Stoicorum
We've already mentioned two rhetorical devices, appeal to authority and alliteration. Rhetorical devices are just that: devices. Cicero, like most politicians and lawyers, used them to persuade. These devices can appeal to some or all of
 the credibility and character of the speaker
the emotions of the audience
logic and reason
The can deploy things like
repetition
analogies, similes, and metaphors
posing unanswered questions
Notice that rhetorical devices are not about the truth of an idea. Instead, they are about the believability of an idea. It's the believablity part that makes them useful to authors.
The kind of fiction I most enjoy and endeavor to write involves realism--I want fiction to take me places and introduce me to people I'd never encounter. They might be real places and people, like 19th century Paris in Les Miserable, or imaginary places, like Ringworld in Larry Niven's novel. Rhetorical devices can give power and authority to descriptions of places and people, making them both credible and believable.
The purpose for authors, then, includes things like engaging the readers emotionally and intellectually, connecting with them culturally, and adding style and flair to your prose.
Like most techniques, rhetorical devices are tricks and should be used sparingly. Over-use can result in techniques that call attention to style rather than the here-and-now of events on the page. This distracts from rather than enhances the reader's engagement with the fictional world. But, used sparingly, they can be like a searchlight at midnight on a moonless night. Knowing what they are and how to use them can enhance any author's prose, whether fiction or non-fiction.
Chiasmus
Chiasmus is a two-part sentence or phrase, where the second part is a reversal of the first. Here are some examples that make this clearer:
“I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.” (Billy Joel)
“Genuine righteousness leads to life, but the pursuit of evil brings death.” (Proverbs 11:19)
"Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves..." (Shakespeare, Othello)
"We shape our buildings, and afterward our buildings shape us." -Winston Churchill.
"We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us." -John McCain.
Antimetabole
This is a kind of chiasmus where the author repeats words or phrases in reverse order for emphasis.
"Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” (JFK’s inaugural address)
“When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” (Common expression)
"Fair is foul and foul is fair." (Shakespeare, Macbeth)
"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious." (Orwell, 1984)
"We didn't land at Plymouth Rock. The rock landed on us." (Malcom X)
Antimetaboles can be particularly effective in delivering laughs.
"I'm not a writer with a drinking problem—I'm a drinker with a writing problem." –Dorothy Parker
"It's not the men in my life that count—it's the life in my men." –Mae West
"What's the IRS's motto? We've got what it takes to take what you've got."
"I remember when they tried to teach me to tell time as a little boy. What they didn’t know,
of course, was that you don’t tell time; time tells you." George Carlin
The surprise of the reversal is what gives the humor.
Conclusion
It just goes to show you, it's always something — if it's not one thing, it's another.
— Rosanne Rosanna Danna
With all due defernce to the late, great Gilda Radner, it just goes to show you, it's always something. One rhetorical device leads to another.
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Footnotes
Finding Your Strength in Difficult Times, David Viscott (McGraw Hill, 1993)
Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track, Feynman, RIchard, Feynman, Michelle (Basic Books, 2005), p. xvi.
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