O M Brack, Jr. on James Boswell's Biography of Samuel Johnson
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- Опубликовано: 25 июн 2024
- O M Brack Jr., curator of the Johnson Tercentenary exhibition at the Huntington Library, discusses the life of one of the world's greatest men of letters, Samuel Johnson. It is Johnson, of course, who is the subject is what is regarded as the greatest biography ever written, James Boswell's Life of Johnson. Dr. Brack has just edited the very first but little-known biography of Johnson written by one of his contemporaries, Sir John Hawkins, and published in 1787.
So many authors are remembered by their books. Johnson's books are remembered because of him and his personality.
A shame, since his books are pure, unadulterated Johnson at his best.
Skip was the chair of my doctoral committee in the late 1970s. He once rescued me from a very dark place by insisting that he would pick me up and take me to downtown Phoenix for dinner and to attend one of the first Yo-Yo Ma concerts at symphony hall. We took our time getting there, so we could luxuriate in his magnificent little 62 Ford while allowing for his explanation of outsiderism in the life and work of Tobias Smollett. When in our discussion I would weave my despair into both warp and weft, he would redirect conversation to Boswell’s revelation about his own depressed state of mind, bridging my self-obsession to the far more interesting despair of the great Scotsman. Then he would link Boswell’s neurasthenia to Smollett’s alienation, easing me out of myself, out of my century.
You experience here the friendly, unaffected scholar... I experienced that and more-he was warm and generous. In addition, he provided me with a fabulous dissertation topic re: Tobias Smollett, and a week’s worth of cigars!
I really enjoyed this talk. Skip clearly was quite a wonderful man. RIP.
I find it very interesting that the good professor states that the word "loopy" was unknown to him and is today obsolete. It must be a product of my time, my background and the place I was raised in that I (and others in my circle) have used the word "loopy" since youth without knowing it was obsolete. I was raised in northern NJ, just across the Hudson from NYC. One thing I have noticed during my life is that the local pronunciations, expressions, vocabulary and slang have changed markedly so that even my son occasionally tells me that my NJ accent comes through too strongly or that no one else would make the same choice of words. Another similar word to loopy which we often used is balmy (but not meaning warm although it could) and more rarely barmy, meaning nutty or odd-thinking. It must be our Irish-English roots in the area that have left a residual of the old vocabulary, which is just passing away now. Of my generation I must be one of the few who would actually come home from my job at lunch-time to work through my Yale editions of Johnson's essays. (BTW, I am not an English major.) I found his "feel" for the language to be brilliant. I once told a young, leftist English professor whom I met on occasion that I thought Johnson was overall the best prose writer in the English language, even after centuries. To my surprise, he told me that he had told his classes the same.
I believe the word he refers to is “looby.”
O like tris conference