Rating: 
Summary: The ultimate airport book
Review: Ah, Ol' Sam, the Great Cham as somebody called him (it's an 18th century misreading of "Khan", fact fans). My opinion of Johnson the writer fluctuates over the years; sometimes he seems a long-winded authoritarian, at other times his juggernaut sentences seem possessed of a superhuman vitality. Whatever. This isn't Johnson the writer we're concerned with, so much as Johnson the talker - the gruff, ridiculously prejudiced, gloomy, scrofulous clubman, holding forth from the biggest chair in the room, wisecracking, bullying, brooding and sulking. Johnson was as lucky to have Boswell, as Boswell was to have Johnson. The conversations of great men tend not to be much fun; Eckermann's "Conversations with Goethe" is fascinating, all right, but Goethe's mixture of gossipy cattiness and Olympian pomposity gets to you after a while (Donald Barthelme wrote an evil parody of it). With Boswell's Johnson it's different. He seems at once painfully real and a caricature of himself. Boswell captures both the readiness to pontificate about anything under the sun and the panicky vulnerability. Eckermann's Goethe leaves the room when he's upset (nothing must ruffle the patrician facade) but Boswell's Johnson stays in his chair - we can see his reaction. Of course there are drawbacks, in that half of the book covers the last ten or so years of Johnson's life, but there really isn't that much hard evidence about Johnson's early life beyond what Boswell himself collected. I reserve my doubts about Johnson's cultural politics, but the rolling, rumbling figure that Boswell sets down is one of my favourite characters in literature. Swift has a darker and more perplexing fascination for me, but you wouldn't have got the 44-year-old Swift out of bed at 3AM for a ramble. He'd have hurled his bedpan at you. Why is it a great airport book? Because there's a lot of it, it's unfailingly entertaining and informative, and it's guaranteed not to include a description of an air crash.
Rating: 
Summary: In retrospect, it depends on what you want out of this.
Review: Almost two years ago, I gave this five stars. On reading much more about Boswell and his procedures, I have to qualify my earlier review. If you want a book about Johnson that tells how one man saw him, then yes, it still merits five stars. If you want a full perspective of Johnson - - as the word biography would imply, I'd downgrade it to three stars. So on balance, four. There are of course many positives, or I wouldn't have given it 5 stars two years ago. Boswell had a strong talent for recording Johnson's conversations, and they are wonderful. Some of them are down right hilarious! Boswell was also a bit of a dramatist, setting up situations such as Johnson's meeting with Wilkes, placing bets over whether he would challenge Johnson on his habit of hiding orange peels. And Boswell could tell a story very dramatically - - it's his dramatic skills and memory which have been the basis on which his champions have defended him. However, as a 'biography' this leaves much to be desired. Not just the issue of scope, with some 80% of the pages being on 20 years of Johnson's life. Boswell just wasn't a biographer, his story is too personal, he inadequately integrates important opinions, and he suppresses important information that's inconsistent with his rather simple view of Johnson. As Richard Schwartz has excellently pointed out, Boswell has presented us with an unshaped series of details, where data do not converge to a whole, and remain undigested. Inaccuracies: Boswell tells us early on that he sometimes scurried across London to verify a date, but he apparently wouldn't consult a perpetual calendar; there are a number of occasions where his dates don't align with the day of week, yet his certainty in dating events make it all sound so true. And there is the famous blooper of his putting Johnson at Oxford for three years, rather than one. The inaccuracies would not be such an issue were it not for the fact that Boswell positions himself as being definitive, and condemns the efforts of John Hawkins and Hester Thrale as being inaccurate. Both of them saw aspects of Johnson whihc Boswell never had the depth to see and understand. Repositioning: Boswell the story teller shaped events... There is an important event where Johnson meets the King in the King's library. Boswell makes it sound as if the King was completely focused on Johnson, and no one else was there - - as if it was a private audience (yet it certainly wasn't). To read this book, you would think that Boswell was one of the most important people in Johnson's life; while Boswell certainly mattered to Johnson, there are very few descriptions of Johnson's life without Boswell, as if Johnson were more dependent on Boswell than the reverse. But the total number of days they were together was a very small fraction of Johnson's life. Suppression of details: Boswell is so intent on describing Johnson's devotion to his departed wife, that he never tells us that Johnson had hoped to remarry, or that later in life he made advances to a memebr of his household. Boswell also won't relay lifelong friend Edmund Hector's concern that at one point Johnson was so depressed that Hector feared it might shorten his life. These details don't fit Boswell's simple view of Johnson - - and when someone like Anna Seward would send him anecdotes with a disturbing tone, Boswell wrote it off to "prejudice." We also know now that Hawkins, who knew Johnson long before Boswell, wrote a bio of Johnson that has been unfairly eclipsed, largely because of Boswell's treatment and Boswell's unquestioned authority. Even for the years that Boswell -did- know Johnson, his record is far from complete. Johnson recovered from one major period of depression by being immersed in family life with the Thrales, yet Boswell never spent much time at their household, and so never really saw that 'family' side of Johnson. Should you avoid this like the plague? No, not at all. But the full unabridged edition represents quite a commitment, and you might be better off reading the abridged version, and spending the time saved by reading Bate's biogrpahy, or even Johnson's own writings. (In writing this review, I've been very influenced by various books & articles by Donald Greene & Richard Schwartz; I've also tried to be sensitive to the defenses of such Boswell defenders as Frederick Pottle.)
Rating:
Summary: In retrospect, it depends on what you want out of this.
Review: Almost two years ago, I gave this five stars. On reading much more about Boswell and his procedures, I have to qualify my earlier review. If you want a book about Johnson that tells how one man saw him, then yes, it still merits five stars. If you want a full perspective of Johnson - - as the word biography would imply, I'd downgrade it to three stars. So on balance, four. There are of course many positives, or I wouldn't have given it 5 stars two years ago. Boswell had a strong talent for recording Johnson's conversations, and they are wonderful. Some of them are down right hilarious! Boswell was also a bit of a dramatist, setting up situations such as Johnson's meeting with Wilkes, placing bets over whether he would challenge Johnson on his habit of hiding orange peels. And Boswell could tell a story very dramatically - - it's his dramatic skills and memory which have been the basis on which his champions have defended him. However, as a 'biography' this leaves much to be desired. Not just the issue of scope, with some 80% of the pages being on 20 years of Johnson's life. Boswell just wasn't a biographer, his story is too personal, he inadequately integrates important opinions, and he suppresses important information that's inconsistent with his rather simple view of Johnson. As Richard Schwartz has excellently pointed out, Boswell has presented us with an unshaped series of details, where data do not converge to a whole, and remain undigested. Inaccuracies: Boswell tells us early on that he sometimes scurried across London to verify a date, but he apparently wouldn't consult a perpetual calendar; there are a number of occasions where his dates don't align with the day of week, yet his certainty in dating events make it all sound so true. And there is the famous blooper of his putting Johnson at Oxford for three years, rather than one. The inaccuracies would not be such an issue were it not for the fact that Boswell positions himself as being definitive, and condemns the efforts of John Hawkins and Hester Thrale as being inaccurate. Both of them saw aspects of Johnson whihc Boswell never had the depth to see and understand. Repositioning: Boswell the story teller shaped events... There is an important event where Johnson meets the King in the King's library. Boswell makes it sound as if the King was completely focused on Johnson, and no one else was there - - as if it was a private audience (yet it certainly wasn't). To read this book, you would think that Boswell was one of the most important people in Johnson's life; while Boswell certainly mattered to Johnson, there are very few descriptions of Johnson's life without Boswell, as if Johnson were more dependent on Boswell than the reverse. But the total number of days they were together was a very small fraction of Johnson's life. Suppression of details: Boswell is so intent on describing Johnson's devotion to his departed wife, that he never tells us that Johnson had hoped to remarry, or that later in life he made advances to a memebr of his household. Boswell also won't relay lifelong friend Edmund Hector's concern that at one point Johnson was so depressed that Hector feared it might shorten his life. These details don't fit Boswell's simple view of Johnson - - and when someone like Anna Seward would send him anecdotes with a disturbing tone, Boswell wrote it off to "prejudice." We also know now that Hawkins, who knew Johnson long before Boswell, wrote a bio of Johnson that has been unfairly eclipsed, largely because of Boswell's treatment and Boswell's unquestioned authority. Even for the years that Boswell -did- know Johnson, his record is far from complete. Johnson recovered from one major period of depression by being immersed in family life with the Thrales, yet Boswell never spent much time at their household, and so never really saw that 'family' side of Johnson. Should you avoid this like the plague? No, not at all. But the full unabridged edition represents quite a commitment, and you might be better off reading the abridged version, and spending the time saved by reading Bate's biogrpahy, or even Johnson's own writings. (In writing this review, I've been very influenced by various books & articles by Donald Greene & Richard Schwartz; I've also tried to be sensitive to the defenses of such Boswell defenders as Frederick Pottle.)
Rating:
Summary: Why is this considered the model of great biography?
Review: Boswell took as his subject, the person called ' the greatest talker the English language has ever known'. He went around with him, goaded him here and there, and allowed him to talk.In return Johnson said countless wise, provocative, interesting, and offensive but above all humorous things. Boswell wrote down these , and also wrote down , or reconstructed conversations of Johnson with his friends. All of this helped make his subject ' alive' to his readers in a way no detailed recording of his every action from minute one of his life to minute zero at the end of his life could. He had the sense and intuition to help bring out what is most interesting in his subject. And so he presents the subject not only in a realistic way but in a sense in a most appealing way. This made Boswell the pioneer in a form of biography , or in one of the techniques of biography which is central to it. Boswell himself with all his much self- regretted dissolution was also an interesting apprentice, a writer too after all who learned from the Master. Johnson is a great and central figure , for many the greatest critic the English language has ever known but he is too an acquaintance and friend of Garrick, Hume others of distinction .Boswell listens to them also .Johnson was something of a curmudgeon a lovable kind of character who in his anger and outbursts amuses us. He was also a moral teacher although apparently he did not give much attention to the stricture regarding the wrongness of needlessly defaming others.Together these two are one of literature's great teams, not equal to the Knight of LeMancha and Sancho but up there on the top.
Like all works of genius this work has its fanatical followers and its petty demeanors. It is better in these cases to trust the first .For a work like this enriches our common humanity as all the truly great books do.
Rating:
Summary: This deserves to be called a "World's Classic"
Review: Boswell was not the obvious choice to write the best biography about Samuel Johnson, much less one of the greatest biographies in world literature. He had much less contact with Johnson than Mrs. Thrale, for many years a close friend of Johnson who spent much more time with him than did Boswell. In fact, Boswell spent perhaps 400 days with Johnson over a period of many years. He also was not Johnson's literary executor. Finally, Boswell was regarded by many of his day, and afterwards, as something of an 18th Century celebrity hound. He made a point of meeting every famous person he could (Voltaire, Rousseau), and went to great efforts to make himself famous. Nevertheless, in his Life of Johnson, Boswell succeeded in portraying Johnson and his circle so vividly that more than 200 years later they come across as real human beings. He did this by breaking the convention of concentrating only on the most favorable aspects of his subject's life, and instead describing Johnson's eccentricities of dress, behavior, etc. Moreover, Boswell did not neglect to include incidents that make himself appear ridiculous. The book is both extremely funny and moving. If you read this, you will want to immediatley get a copy of Boswell's book on the trip that Johnson and he took to the Hebrides.
Rating:
Summary: An Epic Friendship
Review: Charged with everything from homosexuality to hatred of his subject, Boswell gives us a great gift in this monumental work. What must be the greatest document of a friendship besides being a fine piece of biography and an important resource for social historians, The Life of Johnson should not be missed by any student of eighteenth-century English literature. Other than Johnson's literary opinions, you can learn about his days's thoughts on anxiety and religious doubts. So turn your TV off for a month and read a great book and become acquainted with some truly interesting and intellectual people.
Rating:
Summary: The paperback edition is reliable; the hardcover's suspect
Review: For those interested in a reliable text, I suggest the "World's Classics" paperback edition. The hardcover edition, while attractive, is somewhat suspect.
Rating:
Summary: Opens An Intellectual Window To 18th Century London
Review: I chose the 1,000 or so page Wordsworth Classics paperback edition of The Life Of Johnson (ISBN 1 85326 797 x) and was very pleased I did. The book had a nice heft to it, and the print was large enough for a comfortable read. My only major beef with this edition is that Boswell's text is replete with quotations from a variety of languages including Latin, Greek, French, Italian and others, and very few of them are translated into English. Whether the editor assumed that the average modern reader is a polyglot, or was unable to provide the translations for some other reason, I feel deprived at not having had access to this portion of the book's material, particularly as the quotes are most often used to gild the lily of one of Johnson's witticisms. Nevertheless, the book rewards the diligent reader with a wealth of intellectual stimulation, and offers a fascinating look into the England of the period including: polite London society, Oxford University, and jaunts around the British and Scottish countryside. Johnson's somewhat eccentric life and personal habits are lovingly and affectionately relayed by his close friend Boswell, who somehow managed to preserve a vast amount of Johnson's conversation without the aid of a tape recorder. With everyday life as a backdrop, we see how Johnson, a self-described lazy man, managed to produce such an abundant literary legacy, not the least of which was his groundbreaking dictionary. I recommend this book highly to people with an interest in 18th century England, the literary society of the period, or who simply love a great biography.
Rating:
Summary: My favorite biography
Review: I enjoyed reading this biography very much, finding Boswell an amazingly adroit reporter and his subject fascinating and wise. Johnson was full of shrewdness and good sense, along with amusing biases and unusual mannerisms, just the sort of person to ask to liven up a dinner. The book is both humorous and moving, written in a lively style, and good for repeated readings through the years.
Rating: 
Summary: nice but heavily abridged
Review: I liked this but prefer the unabridged edition published by Oxford University Press (in their Oxford World's Classics series). If you're willing to read Boswell, spend a few dollars more for the OUP edition.
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