Samuel JohnsonHarvard University Press, 1998 - 372 pages He was a servant to the public, a writer for hire. He was a hero, an author adding to the glory of his nation. But can a writer be both hack and hero? The career of Samuel Johnson, recounted here by Lawrence Lipking, proves that the two can be one. And it further proves, in its enduring interest for readers, that academic fashions today may be a bit hasty in pronouncing the "death of the author." |
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... Savage demands re- spect . Yet a second image subverts him : the author as parasite and mountebank , someone who grubs for a living . The Life of Savage tells this story too — a portrait of the artist as scrounger . It takes the reader ...
... Savage run through the work . But Johnson's apprenticeship on Grub Street - and perhaps the counterexample of Savage himself - had taught him the value of maintaining a stately , impersonal tone . The detachment of classical wisdom wore ...
... Savage , p . 45. See Clarence Tracy , The Artificial Bastard : A Biog- raphy of Richard Savage ( Cambridge , Mass .: Harvard University Press , 1953 ) , pp . 60-65 . 96. " To the modern reader he appears to have been skating on thin ice ...
Contents
the Western Islands of Scotland | 234 |
The Lives of the English Poets | 259 |
Johnsons Endings | 295 |
Copyright | |
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