The Book Review Review

Book Review this week: eh. The most interesting thing to me, naturally, was the double review of those two new Johnson biographies. Now, I'm sure that many of you have been waiting for literally weeks! for me to make some kind of noise about these new biographies of Johnson, ever since Adam Gopnik wrote up and down about the bizarre sex life of Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale in his summing up of these new books. Gopnik says stuff like this: "Johnson’s piety is more impressive if we imagine it up against the keen daily edge of erotic appetite, rather than simply a long-term bulwark against imagined insanity." I guess it is? Whenever Johnson's undoubtedly bizarre life is brought up again for reconsideration, besides token deference to Boswell, the thing people always mention is that Johnson did biography too, as if that we reason enough to put him under the microscope again. But I'm not convinced that any reimagining of a grumpier Johnson or a more sexually frustrated Johnson is especially warranted, and I hardly think that that's what Johnson did to those whom he biographied. He complained about Milton's politics, as most note; but I think the sort of legend-making that he preferred, and that he got from Boswell, is more like what he puts forth in the Life of Savage, or even in the Life of Swift where, for all his nastiness toward Swift, he refuses to mention why Swift's food was pre-cut at the end of his life (he had tried to stab himself with his fork). Boswell, for all his flaws, did something that his further biographers seem to either not wish, or not be able to do; which is to make him a great character. It may be that Boswell poisoned the well; that the character of Johnson is such that it's now impossible to create a great nonfiction character out of him to contend with Boswell's more literary creation, the way that, say, Joe Gould, from Joseph Mitchell's Joe Gould's Secret is a great nonfiction character. Anyway. The review of these two new books (like most reviews of them I've read, this post has coupled them and had a lot more to say about Johnson than the books themselves) ends by pointing out that though neither of these books will be wished longer than they are, Johnson would've appreciated their being written for the tercentenary of his birth. Maybe. I will try to get a hold of library copies of these and let you know. Or maybe I'll just reread a hundred pages of Boswell or so, instead.