Discussion Groups / English Usage / May 2009

From a review in my favorite pincushion, _The New York Review of
Books_:

 But Buffett has a reputation for transparency and integrity, as
 well as idiosyncrasy, and in Schroeder's hands the oddities of his
 fifty-two-year marriage to his wife Susan, which included
 twenty-six years in which she chose to live apart from him in San
 Francisco while he stayed at home with the "housekeeper" she hired
 and maybe, also, had an affair with _Washington Post_ publisher
 Katherine Graham, are almost beside the point.

Below I have filled in first names to disambiguate the genders, and
done my best to guess at the antecedents of the pronouns:

 But [Warren] Buffett has a reputation for transparency and
 integrity, as well as idiosyncrasy, and in [Alice] Schroeder's
 hands the oddities of his [Warren's] fifty-two-year marriage to
 his [Warren's] wife Susan, which included twenty-six years in
 which she [Susan] chose to live apart from him in San Francisco
 while he [Warren] stayed at home with the "housekeeper" she
 [Susan] hired and maybe, also, had an affair with _Washington
 Post_ publisher Katherine Graham, are almost beside the point.

I do wonder about that last "she", tho.  Mr Buffett (we are told) is a
very rich man; surely he could afford to hire a housekeeper who was
not a housekeeper without his wife's assistance; but the only other
woman in sight is the biographer, who seems even less plausible.
Perhaps "she" is a misprint for "he".  One might also note that the
handiest subject for "maybe, also, had an affair with" is Susan, but
then along comes Ms Graham and we are forced to leap over her (I mean
Susan) & attach the affair to Warren, tho in these times & in such a
sentence it is hard to be sure.