The Wit’s Guide To Palindromes

Or, le beef? Feeble!

Or was it a taco?

The problem with palindromes begins the same way it ends: With the sad fact that the word itself is not one. If you want satisfaction, you’ll only get it in one direction. 

“Cigar Tragic.”
— G.K. Chesterton

Our consolation prize is semordnilap, which describes words that read differently forward and backwards. At best, semordnilaps suggest secret truths hidden in plain sight, because you only eat desserts when you’re stressed, or that anyone who buys Evian is naive. (The relationship between Tums and smut remains opaque.)

“A man, a plan, a canoe, pasta, heros, rajahs, a coloratura, maps, snipe, percale, macaroni, a gag, a banana bag, a tan, a tag, a banana bag again (or a camel), a crepe, pins, Spam, a rut, a Rolo, cash, a jar, sore hats, a peon, a canal – Panama!”
— Guy Steele

In an admirable proof of exactly how artistically unsatisfying palindromes are, Christopher Nolan spent $200 million making Tenet, a backwards-forwards action film that ultimately leaves you exactly where you were. It drew heavily from the Sator Square, an ancient palindromic inscription that was thought to cure rabies. Sadly, it exacerbates aibohphobia.

“He goddam mad dog eh?”
— James Thurber

The comedian Demetri Martin is an expert palindromist, to the point that his old college professor (call him Dr. Awkward) saved and shared an epic palindrome he prepared for a fractal geometry class. But even Martin knows that rot can rob a born actor, and so defined a palindrome as a “phrase or sentence that you might say that might create awkward silence with other people.” Don’t nod!

“Snub no man, nice cinnamon buns.”
— Demetri Martin

This terrific 2020 Believer article on “the occult power of the palindrome” credits the Scottish poet Alistair Reid for pinpointing their glaring nip: “The dream which occupies the tortuous mind of every palindromist is that somewhere within the confines of the language lurks the Great Palindrome, the nutshell which not only fulfills the intricate demands of the art, flowing sweetly in both directions, but which also contains the Final Truth of Things.”

“In word salad, alas, drown I.”
— Win Emmons

And so the way to fix palindromes is to break them. Or to paraphrase Leonard Cohen, there is a crack in everything, that’s how I saw Elba. The poet Paisley Rekdal has done this with her series of Mae West poems, finding a series of Final Truths about the sultry starlet with lines like:

Be oded, caboodled, be beacon and lect.
Don’t be a noodle: be cool and collect.

Is Mae West a palindrome? On!

But the magistrate of malindromes is David Rees, artisanal pencil sharpener and clip-art comic creator. His end-of-year Best Palindrome Lists capture the essence of our era by fracturing the form with such questionable gems as:

• We listened to “Serial” — liars’ O.T. denial, ew! (2015)

• I saw La La Land … was I? (2016)

• Manafort’s on an ant farm (2019)

• I, Fauci (2020)

• COVID DIVORCE (2020)

• Facebook? Data’s laughter at civic slaughter, ta-da! Boof cake! (2021)

And finally, the one malindrome that most imperfectly sums up the Final Truth of Things:

“Derrida, Drake’s e-card arrived!”
— David Rees

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Drat! E Pluribus Riposte Card!

Do geese see God? And are the Riposte Cards I mail out each month to my paying subscribers secretly palindromes? Is the back of the card the inverse of the front? The answer is either Wow! or Huh? And they cost the same minimal amount either way.

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Quote Vote

“first, do no harm. second, do yes charm.”
—

Myq Kaplan

If wordplay isn’t fun, it’s just wordwork, so best to hire a carpenter. What should next week’s exploration be? You vote for it, I write it, you read it, and merrily we roll along.

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That was Issue 222, E.U. ssI! I planned it that way, naturally. There is in fact one palindrome that actually does contain the Final Truth of Things, but wouldn’t you know that it’s in Spanish? "La ruta nos aportó otro paso natural,” which translates as “The path provides us the natural next step.” Onward! My book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting was once again shunned by the Nobel Committee, probably because of the long diatribe against the Swedes I slipped into the chapter about Oscar Levant. Another Final Truth: You can either TAP or PAT the ❤️ below.