Boswell’s Life of Johnson

Same article from yesterday's thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24870552

Amazing quote - couldn't stop laughing.

For what it is worth, Johnson's biography is worth reading - though I think one should read some of Johnson's writing first (don't start with his English language dictionary, regardless of how much you want to). It will give you more of a reason to care about Johnson as a person - which, given the length of the biography, might be needed.

"He was a perpetual drunk, a degenerate gambler, a sex addict, whoremonger, exhibitionist, and rapist. He gave his wife an STD he caught from a prostitute.

Selfish, servile and self-indulgent, lazy and lecherous, vain, proud, obsessed with his aristocratic status, yet with no sense of propriety whatsoever, he frequently fantasized about the feudal affection of serfs for their lords. He loved to watch executions and was a proud supporter of slavery...

Of the talents which ordinarily raise men to eminence as writers, Boswell had absolutely none. There is not in all his books a single remark of his own on literature, politics, religion, or society, which is not either commonplace or absurd. [...] Logic, eloquence, wit, taste, all those things which are generally considered as making a book valuable, were utterly wanting to him. He had, indeed, a quick observation and a retentive memory. These qualities, if he had been a man of sense and virtue, would scarcely of themselves have sufficed to make him conspicuous; but, because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they have made him immortal."

There's a Heinlein quote I'm not finding, to the effect that you should never write the eulogy of a great writer and risk the conclusion that it would have been better if you had died and the great writer had written your eulogy.

James Boswell beat that rap. In this magnificent book review Alvaro de Menard convinces me that he almost does too.

I read an account of Boswell's drinking of an evening once, and it made my liver ache:

"The levels of consumption were at times prodigious. On October 13, 1783 there were three men at dinner at Auchinleck, and between them they polished off three bottles of claret, two bottles of port, two bottles of Lisbon, three bottles of Mountain and one bottle of rum. Three days later six men sat down to dinner, but did not rise until they had emptied seven bottles of claret, two “Scotch pints” of claret (each of which was equivalent to three English pints, and thus to approximately two normal bottles), three bottles of port, one bottle of Lisbon, two bottles of Madeira, one bottle of Mountain and one bottle of rum.

You might think that, after such indulgence, a day or so of dry toast and herbal tea might be just the thing. But the following day seven men were at table, and if anything they exceeded the potations of the previous evening. They again drank seven bottles of claret, two Scotch pints of claret, and three bottles of port, before varying the conclusion of the entertainment with two bottles of Lisbon, one bottle of Madeira and no fewer than three bottles of rum. "

https://standpointmag.co.uk/issues/december-2013/wine-decemb...

The biography is quite a tome. If anyone wants a taste of what it's like without committing to 1000+ pages, you should read the Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland first.

Johnson and Boswell toured Scotland together and then each wrote a short book about it. Well, Johnson wrote a book about it, and Boswell wrote a book about Johnson writing his book. It's pretty much the same style as the later biography but much more compact, and you can usually find both books published in a single volume (both book on the tour of Scotland, that is. )

One thing that struck me when I read Boswell’s Life of Johnson more than twenty years ago is how strange Johnson seems to have been in person yet how strongly he was admired and loved—at least in Boswell’s telling—by people who knew him. Boswell mentions his “oddities of manner, and uncouth gesticulations” [0]. Macaulay goes into more detail: “His grimaces, his gestures, his mutterings, sometimes diverted and sometimes terrified people who did not know him. At a dinner table he would, in a fit of absence, stoop down and twitch off a lady's shoe. He would amaze a drawing-room by suddenly ejaculating a clause of the Lord’s Prayer. He would conceive an unintelligible aversion to a particular alley, and perform a great circuit rather than see the hateful place. He would set his heart on touching every post in the streets through which he walked. If by any chance he missed a post, he would go back a hundred yards and repair the omission. Under the influence of his disease, his senses became morbidly torpid, and his imagination morbidly active. At one time he would stand poring on the town clock without being able to tell the hour. At another, he would distinctly hear his mother, who was many miles off, calling him by his name.” [1]

I wonder if a person today with a similar mental illness would be accepted and respected in society as Johnson was.

[0] https://archive.org/details/lifesamueljohns10boswgoog/page/n...

[1] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42971/42971-h/42971-h.htm#Pa...

Edit: “how strange he seems to have been” -> “how strange Johnson seems to have been”

One thing leads me to lean toward Carlyle's interpretation, which is the mention of Rousseau - he did seem to latch on to people whose reputations have stood some test of time (although in Johnson's case he is responsible for the reputation lasting so maybe it means nothing)

Of course I also wonder, if he was so awful what does it say about Johnson that he tolerated his company. Rousseau comes out looking better for that "Go Away"

Appropriately for the worst person in the world, Boswell tweets regularly: https://twitter.com/jamesboswellesq

I loved this article unreservedly. Thank you for posting it here.

The Intellectuals would be a good read after reading this. :)

I just looked and the audiobook is 54 hours long! That's quite the tome. I have a deep suspicion that like Joyce or Wallace, this is a book for people who really like books. You know, as a concept, taken as a whole. There seems to universal agreement that this is one the "best" or "first" or "most" or "greatest" or some other superlative without actually having any specific reason or agreement as to why. That's always a good hint.