Loving Dr. Johnson by Helen Deutsch

Abstract

I I42 Reviews exactly because they remain relevant as well as memorable. Going back toKastan's well-chosen epigraph, theyprove Keats a better critic than Johnson. UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW WILLY MALEY Loving Dr Johnson. By HELEN DEUTSCH. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2005. xiii+304pp. $35; /22.50. ISBN 978-o-226-14382-8. Samuel Johnson,wrote Frances Burney, 'hasnaturally a noble figure; tall, stout, grand and authoritative: but he stoops horribly,his back isquite round: hismouth iscontinu ally opening and shutting, as ifhewere chewing something; he has a singularmethod of twirlinghis fingers,and twisting his hands: his vast body is inconstant agitation, see-sawing backwards and forwards: his feetare never amoment quiet; and hiswhole great person looked often as if itwere going to roll itself,quite voluntarily, fromhis chair to the floor' (p. 94). The continuing fascinationwith thecontrast between John son's natural nobility and his huge, unwieldy, twitching body is the central focus of Helen Deutsch's intellectually rigorous and emotionally engaged study.Deutsch con jures up Johnson's unruly physical sprawl, his peculiarities of speech, and reads them into hiswriting in away thatproblematizes, rather than determines, agency, arguing that 'If the aberrant body and disembodied voice are read as inextricably related, the fragilityand theatricalityof Johnson's authority is leftvisibly in thebalance' (p. I02). The resulting account of Johnson, and of others' need of him, isoften oddly moving. Deutsch offers an illuminating perspective on Johnson by focusing on his body and the anecdotal form,both ofwhich are central to the cult of Johnson and yet are troublesome, unstable, and contested in academic terms.Deutsch raises important questions about the use of anecdote in criticism, slyly pointing to the influence of anecdote both in the shaping of the literary canon and in the formation of literary communities. It is thus not only Johnson who is brought into a new light, but the academic community and theneed foran identifying literarycanon. Less subtle, surprisingly, isDeutsch's handling of gender and form. In a disap pointing Chapter 4, 'The Ephesian Matron and Johnson's Corpse', Hester Thrale is ratherawkwardly dealtwith, perhaps because Thrale's spikyoddnesses do not inspire the same affection as Johnson and Boswell's peculiarities. The dynamics of gender and power in the production of the eighteenth-century literary anecdote are not as thoughtfully addressed as one might have expected: the robust introduction and the inclusion of personal anecdotes relating toDeutsch's own experiences of sexism in a male-dominated academy promised more in this area. It is significant thatwe are given not Thrale's marginalia in Boswell's Life of Johnson, but that of readers of an I887 Harvard edition: fordespite her delight in eighteenth-century anecdote, Deutsch isoftenmost persuasive when discussing the ways inwhich the figureof Johnson is a focal identifyingpoint for many kinds of liter ary and scholarly communities. Like Hamlet's ghost-itself a recurrentmotif inher book-in an intriguing coda Johnson is found haunting a range of textsbyNathaniel Hawthorne, Vladimir Nabokov, and Samuel Beckett. At various points, Deutsch expresses a desire tomake us see Johnson afresh. She certainly achieves this through her careful examination and re-examination of his various representations from different angles throughout her book, and hermedita tions on his physicality, vulnerability, and mortality. Most importantly,however, she achieves her aim of reframing Johnson through her discussion of affection and obses sion in academia, and her engagingly honest championing of the role of the heart in scholarly endeavour. UNIVERSITY OFYORK EMMAMAJOR ...