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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... Fiction evades the hardest question about the story , the extent to which a fuller picture of fiction might reveal it as the natural ally of falsehood rather than truth . Sophisticated readers raise questions like this , and so do some ...
... fiction deceives . This is , to be sure , a paradoxical theme . A fiction that constantly inculcates the danger of fiction runs the risk of self - cancellation and self - contradiction - not to mention monotony . Yet if inconsistencies ...
... fiction teaches the futility of fiction . Mean- while we are all at sea.29 Nor do we ever touch shore in Johnson's fables . All his techniques for insuring that fiction will do no harm - the explicitness , the cau- tionary morals , the ...
Contents
the Western Islands of Scotland | 234 |
The Lives of the English Poets | 259 |
Johnsons Endings | 295 |
Copyright | |
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