Books in Brief: Boswell’s Clap and Other Essays: Medical Analyses of Literary Men’s Afflictions

Boswell’s Clap and Other Essays: Medical Analyses of Literary Men’s Afflictions, by William B. Ober, (Southern Illinois, 291 pp., $17.50). Despite its piquant title, this is not an amusing book. It is not amusing—except perhaps to a doctor who is a failed writer—to have all the clinical details of the 23 cases of gonorrhea already “confessed to” by the guilt-ridden Boswell in his Journals. The famous biog-grapher’s obsessive priapism and need to be reassured of his masculinity are already well known and throw no light on the magisterial Life of Johnson. “Publication of the Life gave him his day of glory,” says Dr. Ober condescendingly, adding, “It may have ensured his reputation for posterity . . .” May? Whose glory are we reading about? Boswell’s? Johnson’s? or Dr. Ober’s? The other nine essays, with no exceptions, throw even less light on their subjects. Swinburne’s masochism and the flogging block at Eton which reinforced his taste for the whip are old hat; the only mystery there is how Swinburne ever achieved his reputation as even a minor poet. Keats is dragged in by the hair because of the line about poppy fumes in “To Autumn” and because, as always in those days, laudanum was prescribed to those dying of consumption. William Carlos Williams, a doctor himself, is included for no discernible medical reason, but his poetry is severely slapped around. “All one can say is that he was a warm genuine human being, a very nice man who enjoyed the act of writing”! Only when dealing with D. H. Lawrence and Christopher Smart does Dr. Ober break new ground. Lady Chatterley’s Lover deserves every bit of the put-down it gets, and the great poet Smart is shown to be saner than those who locked him up as a looney.

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Selden Rodman

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Boswell’s Clap and Other Essays: Medical Analyses of Literary Men’s Afflictions, by William B. Ober, (Southern Illinois, 291 pp., $17.50). Despite its piquant title, this is not an amusing book. It is not amusing—except perhaps to a doctor who is a failed writer—to have all the clinical details of the 23 cases of gonorrhea already “confessed to” by the guilt-ridden Boswell in his Journals. The famous biog-grapher’s obsessive priapism and need to be reassured of his masculinity are already well known and throw no light on the magisterial Life of Johnson. “Publication of the Life gave him his day of glory,” says Dr. Ober condescendingly, adding, “It may have ensured his reputation for posterity . . .” May? Whose glory are we reading about? Boswell’s? Johnson’s? or Dr. Ober’s? The other nine essays, with no exceptions, throw even less light on their subjects. Swinburne’s masochism and the flogging block at Eton which reinforced his taste for the whip are old hat; the only mystery there is how Swinburne ever achieved his reputation as even a minor poet. Keats is dragged in by the hair because of the line about poppy fumes in “To Autumn” and because, as always in those days, laudanum was prescribed to those dying of consumption. William Carlos Williams, a doctor himself, is included for no discernible medical reason, but his poetry is severely slapped around. “All one can say is that he was a warm genuine human being, a very nice man who enjoyed the act of writing”! Only when dealing with D. H. Lawrence and Christopher Smart does Dr. Ober break new ground. Lady Chatterley’s Lover deserves every bit of the put-down it gets, and the great poet Smart is shown to be saner than those who locked him up as a looney.