Alas, the hiatus is permanent. I guess they missed their own obituary for
him on September 27, 2009. I just read this is in The Sunday New York Times
Magazine on page 14 at the bottom of the "On Language" column,
which he wrote for years. The best part is the title of the article that
appears above, called "Error-Proof."
Apparently, the Times caught their error, or just have such a long
production lead time that it was too late, as the online version indicates:
Postscript: October 3, 2009
MAGAZINE
A note with the “On Language” column on Page 14
this weekend refers to the absence of the regular columnist, William Safire.
Mr. Safire died last Sunday, after some copies had gone to press.
I know that print
journalism is a tough business, but I did note that the new Economist,
which I got in the mail Friday, also had an obituary for Mr. Safire.
Mistakes in life are unavoidable and there is no doing anything without making them, but this one cracked me up
because of the name of the article that it appeared under (which is a very nice
essay, by the way, on how the obsession with grammatical correctness is a
"schoolmarm's hallucination"). I suspect the author, Ammon Shea is a
bit horrified by all this, but I hope he also sees the humor and takes heart in
that more people will likely read his column as a result.
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