Books in Brief: Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing

Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing, by Paul Fussell (Harcourt, 303 pp., $9.50). Professor Fussell has resorted to that ancient academic ruse of writing about someone famous, as a cover for airing personal prejudices and pet theories only marginally concerned with the title character. The first 34 pages of his book are an adequate summary of Johnson’s life as a writer, but, from there on, it is muddy going. The author takes a few valid swipes at the Romantic school of literature and criticism, which pretends to a new level of “creativity” and “individual inspiration” while looking askance at the less egocentric, less pretentious work of men like Johnson. But then Professor Fussell launches into a sea of twaddle about the writer as the prisoner of genre and other fevered notions, with poor Sam Johnson simply rattling along for the ride. Still, in the midst of much silly and artificial codifying and microanalysis, some real glimmerings of understanding and appreciation for Samuel Johnson seep through. His amazing versatility as a writer has too often been overshadowed by his legendary status as a “character,” thanks to the efforts of Boswell and a second wave of men like Macaulay, who disliked Johnson’s Toryism and intentionally limned him as a colorful crank. Professor Fussell does not. The real Johnson was, no doubt, an eccentric, even a neurotic, but he was also a sound conservative and a devout Christian in an age that scoffed at both. Fortunately, his prowess as a conversationalist and an advocate were such that he held even the beautiful people at bay. “There is no arguing with Johnson,” Oliver Goldsmith once said, “for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.” Were the Great Cham of English letters alive today, he would probably dismiss Professor Fussell with words he once used on James Boswell: “Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.” A. BAKSHIAN