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From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
To: <pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 12:00 AM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3591
>
> pynchon-l-digest Wednesday, October 8 2003 Volume 02 : Number
3591
>
>
>
> Re: NP Red Sox Win
> Happy Birthday, Niels Bohr!
> Re: NP Red Sox Win
> NP Charles A. Kupchan
> Re: NP Red Sox Win
> Re: Characters and caring in general and VLVL.
> NPPF Commentary Line 172, P. 154-156 Part 3
> NPPF Commentary Line 172, P. 154-156
> NPPF Commentary Line 172, P. 154-156 Part 2
> see a northern human wreck with his not as fatigued lady
> Pynchon On Zorn-List
> Re: NPPF Commentary Line 172, P. 154-156 Part 3
>
> Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2003 08:07:02 -0700
> From: "Vincent A. Maeder" <vmaeder@cycn-phx.com>
> Subject: NPPF Commentary Line 172, P. 154-156 Part 3
>
> Back to Mr. Kinbote's little black book which contains "a footnote from
> Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson . . ." Although I would be harried to
> find a suitable footnote from this opus, I have supplied a website that
> seems to have the complete work:
> http://newark.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/BLJ/ But it is interesting that
> Mr. Kinbote brings up this reference. Perhaps he saw our Mr. Shade as
> his Mr. Boswell to his own works. Also, here Mr. Kinbote has actually
> played the Boswell part by transcribing Mr. Shade's conversations.
> Well, here's some encyclopedic snippets of these two gents.
>
> James Boswell, 1740-1795, was a Scottish lawyer, diarist, and writer
> renowned as the biographer of Samuel Johnson. He inspired a noun:
> Boswell, n. assiduous and devoted admirer, student, and recorder of
> another's words and deeds. Some encyclopedia around here states that
> Mr. Boswell was the son of a judge. He reluctantly studied law and
> practiced throughout his life. His true interest was in a literary
> career and in associating with the great individuals of the time. He
> met Samuel Johnson in 1763 and, having himself achieved fame with his
> Account of Corsica (1768), produced Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides
> with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1785). His great work, The Life of Samuel
> Johnson, LL.D. appeared in 1791. Boswell recorded Johnson's
> conversation so minutely that Johnson is better remembered today for his
> sayings than for his own literary works. The curious combination of
> Boswell's own character (he was vainglorious and dissolute) and his
> genius at biography has led later critics to call him the greatest of
> all biographers. Masses of Boswell manuscript, discovered in the 20th
> cent. near Dublin, have enhanced his reputation.
>
> As for Mr. Johnson, the encyclopedia states that Samuel Johnson,
> 1709-84, was an English author. The leading literary scholar and critic
> of his day, he helped to define the great period of English literature
> known as the Augustan Age. He is as celebrated for his brilliant
> conversation as for his writing. He began writing for London magazines
> around 1737, on literary and political subjects. The anonymously
> published poem London (1738) won the praise of Pope, and his reputation
> was further enhanced by his poetic satire The Vanity of Human Wishes
> (1749) and his moral essays in The Rambler (1750-52). Johnson's place
> was permanently assured by his great Dictionary of the English Language
> (1755), the first comprehensive English lexicon. Rasselas, a moral
> romance, appeared in 1759, and the Idler essays between 1758 and 1760.
> In 1763, Johnson met James Boswell, and his life thereafter is
> documented in Boswell's great biography (1791). With Joshua Reynolds he
> founded (1764) "The Club"; this elite gathering, with such members as
> Goldsmith, Burke, and Garrick, was dominated by Johnson, whose wit and
> aphorisms are still remembered. In 1765, he published his edition of
> Shakespeare, the model for later editions. His last works include an
> account (1775) of a trip with Boswell to the Hebrides and the perceptive
> 10-volume Lives of the Poets (1779-81). He was England's first complete
> man of letters, and his influence was incalculable.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2003 08:06:54 -0700
> From: "Vincent A. Maeder" <vmaeder@cycn-phx.com>
> Subject: NPPF Commentary Line 172, P. 154-156
>
> We now begin the discussion of the commentary from line 172 at page 154
> through line 275 p. 174. I and my trusty compatriot will take turns at
> each commentary. There are 14 commentaries and since we are to complete
> this in seven days, I will take two or three comments per night and post
> them early in the morning. My only hope is that I can somehow appear to
> belong to the august group of Jasper Fidget, cfa, David Morris, The
> Great Quail, Keith McMullen (s~Z/slothenvypride), Don Corathers, and
> Michael Joseph. Thank you, one and all, for your eloquent and
> intelligent contributions.
>
> Line 172: books and people
> As we begin, we've just commenced our reading of the commentary
> associated with Canto Two. Canto Two deals in a direct way the supposed
> author's, Mr. Shade's, confrontation with death. The canto ends in Mr.
> Shade's discovery of his daughter's death.
>
> Line 172 ends the first stanza of six lines in length. The poet,
> ostensibly Mr. Shade, takes us back to his childhood, or earlier life,
> when he believed there was a truth regarding life after death, whereas
> he stood alone without such knowledge despite a "great conspiracy" of
> books and people hiding the truth from him.
>
> Mr. Kinbote's two page commentary plays reluctant with quotes of people
> in a little black book he carries, mimicking the poem itself, Mr.
> Kinbote creating his own, perhaps, small conspiracy of books and people
> who would hide the truth from the reader (as the reader is held hostage
> to Mr. Kinbote's commentary and his veracity and forthrightness in
> sharing all of his information without bias or prejudice). Mr. Kinbote
> shares Mr. Shade's thoughts on several subjects.
>
> 1) Book reviewers: "empty my skoramis on some poor hack's pate" roughly
> translated as "empty my chamber pot on some writer for hire's head."
> http://www.wordwizard.com/clubhouse/founddiscuss.asp?Num=4144
>
> 2) Head of the Russian Dept: Referring to Pnin here, and the character
> VN created in the novel by the same name.
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679723412/102-1197107-284
> 3356?v=glance "Pnin is a professor of Russian at an American college
> who takes the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he cannot
> master. Pnin is a tireless lover who writes to his treacherous Liza: "A
> genius needs to keep so much in store, and thus cannot offer you the
> whole of himself as I do." Pnin is the focal point of subtle academic
> conspiracies he cannot begin to comprehend, yet he stages a faculty
> party to end all faculty parties forever." He also discusses "those
> joint authors of genius [Ilia] Ilf and [Evgenii] Petrov" who
> collaborated on the comedy The Twelve Chairs.
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0810114844/qid=1065500968/sr=2-2/
> ref=sr_2_2/102-1197107-2843356
>
> 3) Vulgar friend: "corny cook-out chef apron" perhaps "danger, men
> cooking" http://www.findgift.com/gift-ideas/pid-17614/
>
> 4) Teaching college-level Shakespeare: A bit of hyperbole here on the
> use of purple prose. An insight perhaps into VN's own teaching style as
> well.
>
> 5) Marx and Freud: Nice contrast and encapsulation by Mr. Shade.
>
> 6) Students' papers: This is a simple and sincere passage that may be
> highly symbolic of VN's teaching style. I'll leave it at that.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2003 08:07:00 -0700
> From: "Vincent A. Maeder" <vmaeder@cycn-phx.com>
> Subject: NPPF Commentary Line 172, P. 154-156 Part 2
>
> Mr. Kinbote's little black book has some interesting notes contained in
> it. Among them, "the inscriptions on the trees in Wordsmith's famous
> avenue . . ." This brings to mind another study of death from a great
> poet, sounding close to Wordsmith; Wordsworth. Here is an interesting
> bit of trivia that Mr. Kinbote might have had in mind as he rambled
> through this part of the commentary:
>
> "In a poem written during the fall of 1811, Wordsworth provided an
> inscription to be engraved on a cenotaph that Sir George Beaumont raised
> a year later in Reynolds's honor at the end of an avenue of trees on his
> country estate at Coleorton. It is an interesting act of ventriloquism
> in which the poet resuscitates Reynolds's memory and reputation
> precisely by invoking the natural cycle of generation that Blake would
> deny the painter:
>
> Ye Lime-trees, ranged before this hallowed Urn,
> Shoot forth with lively power at Spring's return;
> And be not slow a stately growth to rear
> Of pillars, branching off from year to year,
> Till they have learned to frame a darksome aisle; -
> That may recall to mind that awful Pile
> Where Reynolds, 'mid our country's noblest dead
> In the last sanctity of fame is laid.
> - There, though by right the excelling Painter sleep
> Where Death and Glory a joint sabbath keep,
> Yet not the less his Spirit would hold dear
> Self-hidden praise, and Friendship's private tear:
> Hence, on my patrimonial grounds, have I
> Raised this frail memorial to his memory;
> From youth a zealous follower of the Art
> That he professed; attached to him in heart;
> Admiring, loving, and with grief and pride
> Feeling what England lost when Reynolds died.37
>
> Wordsworth's Beaumont will shed the "private tear" that George III could
> drop only in Blake's unconventional ear. The lime-tree aisle points to
> the darkened interior of St. Paul's, where the painter's body had been
> interred, but the ambition of the poem is to transplant the spirit of an
> absent friend to the patrimonial grounds of his disciple, a connoisseur
> and amateur painter. Reynolds, the quintessentially urban artist, the
> painter who told Charles James Fox that "the human face was his
> landscape," 38 has been inscribed within the grounds of Beaumont's
> ancestral estate, claimed not just by "England" but by a particularly
> powerful rural vision of that country's greatness.
> http://www.bostonathenaeum.org/reynolds.html
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 07 Oct 2003 20:25:43 -0700
> From: Mary Krimmel <mary@krimmel.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Commentary Line 172, P. 154-156 Part 3
>
> Thank you for good commentary, Vincent A. Maeder.
>
> Probably others have enjoyed the book "Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The
> Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson" / Adam Sisman, as I have. Both Sisman's
> original eight-page Introduction to the book and his two-page introduction
> to the Study Guide appended in the Penguin edition are well worth reading.
>
> The book suggests so many Kinbote/Shade parallels (and divergences) that
> had it been produced fifty years earlier I could suppose that VN had read
> it. The title is taken from Boswell's first sentence in the "Life..."
> [Sisman modernized Boswell's spelling and punctuation.]
>
> "To write the life of him who excelled all mankind in writing the
> lives of others...may be reckoned in me a presumptuous task."
>
> A self-assessment about as far from Kinbote as you can imagine. I am
> tempted to quote one paragraph from Sisman's introduction (p.xviii in the
> Penguin edition) and I yield to temptation.
>
> "The Life of Johnson can be read as an unending contest between
> author and subject for posterity. Johnson and Boswell are locked together
> for all time, in part-struggle, part-embrace. Boswell will forever be
known
> as Johnson's sidekick, remembered principally because he wrote the life of
> a greater man; Johnson is immortalized but also imprisoned by the Life,
> known best as Boswell portrayed him. Each is a creation of the other."
>
> Mary Krimmel
>
> At 08:07 AM 10/7/03 -0700, you wrote:
> >Back to Mr. Kinbote's little black book which contains "a footnote from
> >Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson . . ." Although I would be harried to
> >find a suitable footnote from this opus, I have supplied a website that
> >seems to have the complete work:
> >http://newark.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/BLJ/ But it is interesting that
> >Mr. Kinbote brings up this reference. Perhaps he saw our Mr. Shade as
> >his Mr. Boswell to his own works. Also, here Mr. Kinbote has actually
> >played the Boswell part by transcribing Mr. Shade's conversations.
> >Well, here's some encyclopedic snippets of these two gents.
> >
> >James Boswell, 1740-1795, was a Scottish lawyer, diarist, and writer
> >renowned as the biographer of Samuel Johnson. He inspired a noun:
> >Boswell, n. assiduous and devoted admirer, student, and recorder of
> >another's words and deeds. Some encyclopedia around here states that
> >Mr. Boswell was the son of a judge. He reluctantly studied law and
> >practiced throughout his life. His true interest was in a literary
> >career and in associating with the great individuals of the time. He
> >met Samuel Johnson in 1763 and, having himself achieved fame with his
> >Account of Corsica (1768), produced Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides
> >with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1785). His great work, The Life of Samuel
> >Johnson, LL.D. appeared in 1791. Boswell recorded Johnson's
> >conversation so minutely that Johnson is better remembered today for his
> >sayings than for his own literary works. The curious combination of
> >Boswell's own character (he was vainglorious and dissolute) and his
> >genius at biography has led later critics to call him the greatest of
> >all biographers. Masses of Boswell manuscript, discovered in the 20th
> >cent. near Dublin, have enhanced his reputation.
> >
> >As for Mr. Johnson, the encyclopedia states that Samuel Johnson,
> >1709-84, was an English author. The leading literary scholar and critic
> >of his day, he helped to define the great period of English literature
> >known as the Augustan Age. He is as celebrated for his brilliant
> >conversation as for his writing. He began writing for London magazines
> >around 1737, on literary and political subjects. The anonymously
> >published poem London (1738) won the praise of Pope, and his reputation
> >was further enhanced by his poetic satire The Vanity of Human Wishes
> >(1749) and his moral essays in The Rambler (1750-52). Johnson's place
> >was permanently assured by his great Dictionary of the English Language
> >(1755), the first comprehensive English lexicon. Rasselas, a moral
> >romance, appeared in 1759, and the Idler essays between 1758 and 1760.
> >In 1763, Johnson met James Boswell, and his life thereafter is
> >documented in Boswell's great biography (1791). With Joshua Reynolds he
> >founded (1764) "The Club"; this elite gathering, with such members as
> >Goldsmith, Burke, and Garrick, was dominated by Johnson, whose wit and
> >aphorisms are still remembered. In 1765, he published his edition of
> >Shakespeare, the model for later editions. His last works include an
> >account (1775) of a trip with Boswell to the Hebrides and the perceptive
> >10-volume Lives of the Poets (1779-81). He was England's first complete
> >man of letters, and his influence was incalculable.
>
From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
To: <pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 12:00 AM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3591
>
> pynchon-l-digest Wednesday, October 8 2003 Volume 02 : Number
3591
>
>
>
> Re: NP Red Sox Win
> Happy Birthday, Niels Bohr!
> Re: NP Red Sox Win
> NP Charles A. Kupchan
> Re: NP Red Sox Win
> Re: Characters and caring in general and VLVL.
> NPPF Commentary Line 172, P. 154-156 Part 3
> NPPF Commentary Line 172, P. 154-156
> NPPF Commentary Line 172, P. 154-156 Part 2
> see a northern human wreck with his not as fatigued lady
> Pynchon On Zorn-List
> Re: NPPF Commentary Line 172, P. 154-156 Part 3
>
> Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2003 08:07:02 -0700
> From: "Vincent A. Maeder" <vmaeder@cycn-phx.com>
> Subject: NPPF Commentary Line 172, P. 154-156 Part 3
>
> Back to Mr. Kinbote's little black book which contains "a footnote from
> Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson . . ." Although I would be harried to
> find a suitable footnote from this opus, I have supplied a website that
> seems to have the complete work:
> http://newark.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/BLJ/ But it is interesting that
> Mr. Kinbote brings up this reference. Perhaps he saw our Mr. Shade as
> his Mr. Boswell to his own works. Also, here Mr. Kinbote has actually
> played the Boswell part by transcribing Mr. Shade's conversations.
> Well, here's some encyclopedic snippets of these two gents.
>
> James Boswell, 1740-1795, was a Scottish lawyer, diarist, and writer
> renowned as the biographer of Samuel Johnson. He inspired a noun:
> Boswell, n. assiduous and devoted admirer, student, and recorder of
> another's words and deeds. Some encyclopedia around here states that
> Mr. Boswell was the son of a judge. He reluctantly studied law and
> practiced throughout his life. His true interest was in a literary
> career and in associating with the great individuals of the time. He
> met Samuel Johnson in 1763 and, having himself achieved fame with his
> Account of Corsica (1768), produced Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides
> with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1785). His great work, The Life of Samuel
> Johnson, LL.D. appeared in 1791. Boswell recorded Johnson's
> conversation so minutely that Johnson is better remembered today for his
> sayings than for his own literary works. The curious combination of
> Boswell's own character (he was vainglorious and dissolute) and his
> genius at biography has led later critics to call him the greatest of
> all biographers. Masses of Boswell manuscript, discovered in the 20th
> cent. near Dublin, have enhanced his reputation.
>
> As for Mr. Johnson, the encyclopedia states that Samuel Johnson,
> 1709-84, was an English author. The leading literary scholar and critic
> of his day, he helped to define the great period of English literature
> known as the Augustan Age. He is as celebrated for his brilliant
> conversation as for his writing. He began writing for London magazines
> around 1737, on literary and political subjects. The anonymously
> published poem London (1738) won the praise of Pope, and his reputation
> was further enhanced by his poetic satire The Vanity of Human Wishes
> (1749) and his moral essays in The Rambler (1750-52). Johnson's place
> was permanently assured by his great Dictionary of the English Language
> (1755), the first comprehensive English lexicon. Rasselas, a moral
> romance, appeared in 1759, and the Idler essays between 1758 and 1760.
> In 1763, Johnson met James Boswell, and his life thereafter is
> documented in Boswell's great biography (1791). With Joshua Reynolds he
> founded (1764) "The Club"; this elite gathering, with such members as
> Goldsmith, Burke, and Garrick, was dominated by Johnson, whose wit and
> aphorisms are still remembered. In 1765, he published his edition of
> Shakespeare, the model for later editions. His last works include an
> account (1775) of a trip with Boswell to the Hebrides and the perceptive
> 10-volume Lives of the Poets (1779-81). He was England's first complete
> man of letters, and his influence was incalculable.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2003 08:06:54 -0700
> From: "Vincent A. Maeder" <vmaeder@cycn-phx.com>
> Subject: NPPF Commentary Line 172, P. 154-156
>
> We now begin the discussion of the commentary from line 172 at page 154
> through line 275 p. 174. I and my trusty compatriot will take turns at
> each commentary. There are 14 commentaries and since we are to complete
> this in seven days, I will take two or three comments per night and post
> them early in the morning. My only hope is that I can somehow appear to
> belong to the august group of Jasper Fidget, cfa, David Morris, The
> Great Quail, Keith McMullen (s~Z/slothenvypride), Don Corathers, and
> Michael Joseph. Thank you, one and all, for your eloquent and
> intelligent contributions.
>
> Line 172: books and people
> As we begin, we've just commenced our reading of the commentary
> associated with Canto Two. Canto Two deals in a direct way the supposed
> author's, Mr. Shade's, confrontation with death. The canto ends in Mr.
> Shade's discovery of his daughter's death.
>
> Line 172 ends the first stanza of six lines in length. The poet,
> ostensibly Mr. Shade, takes us back to his childhood, or earlier life,
> when he believed there was a truth regarding life after death, whereas
> he stood alone without such knowledge despite a "great conspiracy" of
> books and people hiding the truth from him.
>
> Mr. Kinbote's two page commentary plays reluctant with quotes of people
> in a little black book he carries, mimicking the poem itself, Mr.
> Kinbote creating his own, perhaps, small conspiracy of books and people
> who would hide the truth from the reader (as the reader is held hostage
> to Mr. Kinbote's commentary and his veracity and forthrightness in
> sharing all of his information without bias or prejudice). Mr. Kinbote
> shares Mr. Shade's thoughts on several subjects.
>
> 1) Book reviewers: "empty my skoramis on some poor hack's pate" roughly
> translated as "empty my chamber pot on some writer for hire's head."
> http://www.wordwizard.com/clubhouse/founddiscuss.asp?Num=4144
>
> 2) Head of the Russian Dept: Referring to Pnin here, and the character
> VN created in the novel by the same name.
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679723412/102-1197107-284
> 3356?v=glance "Pnin is a professor of Russian at an American college
> who takes the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he cannot
> master. Pnin is a tireless lover who writes to his treacherous Liza: "A
> genius needs to keep so much in store, and thus cannot offer you the
> whole of himself as I do." Pnin is the focal point of subtle academic
> conspiracies he cannot begin to comprehend, yet he stages a faculty
> party to end all faculty parties forever." He also discusses "those
> joint authors of genius [Ilia] Ilf and [Evgenii] Petrov" who
> collaborated on the comedy The Twelve Chairs.
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0810114844/qid=1065500968/sr=2-2/
> ref=sr_2_2/102-1197107-2843356
>
> 3) Vulgar friend: "corny cook-out chef apron" perhaps "danger, men
> cooking" http://www.findgift.com/gift-ideas/pid-17614/
>
> 4) Teaching college-level Shakespeare: A bit of hyperbole here on the
> use of purple prose. An insight perhaps into VN's own teaching style as
> well.
>
> 5) Marx and Freud: Nice contrast and encapsulation by Mr. Shade.
>
> 6) Students' papers: This is a simple and sincere passage that may be
> highly symbolic of VN's teaching style. I'll leave it at that.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2003 08:07:00 -0700
> From: "Vincent A. Maeder" <vmaeder@cycn-phx.com>
> Subject: NPPF Commentary Line 172, P. 154-156 Part 2
>
> Mr. Kinbote's little black book has some interesting notes contained in
> it. Among them, "the inscriptions on the trees in Wordsmith's famous
> avenue . . ." This brings to mind another study of death from a great
> poet, sounding close to Wordsmith; Wordsworth. Here is an interesting
> bit of trivia that Mr. Kinbote might have had in mind as he rambled
> through this part of the commentary:
>
> "In a poem written during the fall of 1811, Wordsworth provided an
> inscription to be engraved on a cenotaph that Sir George Beaumont raised
> a year later in Reynolds's honor at the end of an avenue of trees on his
> country estate at Coleorton. It is an interesting act of ventriloquism
> in which the poet resuscitates Reynolds's memory and reputation
> precisely by invoking the natural cycle of generation that Blake would
> deny the painter:
>
> Ye Lime-trees, ranged before this hallowed Urn,
> Shoot forth with lively power at Spring's return;
> And be not slow a stately growth to rear
> Of pillars, branching off from year to year,
> Till they have learned to frame a darksome aisle; -
> That may recall to mind that awful Pile
> Where Reynolds, 'mid our country's noblest dead
> In the last sanctity of fame is laid.
> - There, though by right the excelling Painter sleep
> Where Death and Glory a joint sabbath keep,
> Yet not the less his Spirit would hold dear
> Self-hidden praise, and Friendship's private tear:
> Hence, on my patrimonial grounds, have I
> Raised this frail memorial to his memory;
> From youth a zealous follower of the Art
> That he professed; attached to him in heart;
> Admiring, loving, and with grief and pride
> Feeling what England lost when Reynolds died.37
>
> Wordsworth's Beaumont will shed the "private tear" that George III could
> drop only in Blake's unconventional ear. The lime-tree aisle points to
> the darkened interior of St. Paul's, where the painter's body had been
> interred, but the ambition of the poem is to transplant the spirit of an
> absent friend to the patrimonial grounds of his disciple, a connoisseur
> and amateur painter. Reynolds, the quintessentially urban artist, the
> painter who told Charles James Fox that "the human face was his
> landscape," 38 has been inscribed within the grounds of Beaumont's
> ancestral estate, claimed not just by "England" but by a particularly
> powerful rural vision of that country's greatness.
> http://www.bostonathenaeum.org/reynolds.html
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 07 Oct 2003 20:25:43 -0700
> From: Mary Krimmel <mary@krimmel.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Commentary Line 172, P. 154-156 Part 3
>
> Thank you for good commentary, Vincent A. Maeder.
>
> Probably others have enjoyed the book "Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The
> Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson" / Adam Sisman, as I have. Both Sisman's
> original eight-page Introduction to the book and his two-page introduction
> to the Study Guide appended in the Penguin edition are well worth reading.
>
> The book suggests so many Kinbote/Shade parallels (and divergences) that
> had it been produced fifty years earlier I could suppose that VN had read
> it. The title is taken from Boswell's first sentence in the "Life..."
> [Sisman modernized Boswell's spelling and punctuation.]
>
> "To write the life of him who excelled all mankind in writing the
> lives of others...may be reckoned in me a presumptuous task."
>
> A self-assessment about as far from Kinbote as you can imagine. I am
> tempted to quote one paragraph from Sisman's introduction (p.xviii in the
> Penguin edition) and I yield to temptation.
>
> "The Life of Johnson can be read as an unending contest between
> author and subject for posterity. Johnson and Boswell are locked together
> for all time, in part-struggle, part-embrace. Boswell will forever be
known
> as Johnson's sidekick, remembered principally because he wrote the life of
> a greater man; Johnson is immortalized but also imprisoned by the Life,
> known best as Boswell portrayed him. Each is a creation of the other."
>
> Mary Krimmel
>
> At 08:07 AM 10/7/03 -0700, you wrote:
> >Back to Mr. Kinbote's little black book which contains "a footnote from
> >Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson . . ." Although I would be harried to
> >find a suitable footnote from this opus, I have supplied a website that
> >seems to have the complete work:
> >http://newark.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/BLJ/ But it is interesting that
> >Mr. Kinbote brings up this reference. Perhaps he saw our Mr. Shade as
> >his Mr. Boswell to his own works. Also, here Mr. Kinbote has actually
> >played the Boswell part by transcribing Mr. Shade's conversations.
> >Well, here's some encyclopedic snippets of these two gents.
> >
> >James Boswell, 1740-1795, was a Scottish lawyer, diarist, and writer
> >renowned as the biographer of Samuel Johnson. He inspired a noun:
> >Boswell, n. assiduous and devoted admirer, student, and recorder of
> >another's words and deeds. Some encyclopedia around here states that
> >Mr. Boswell was the son of a judge. He reluctantly studied law and
> >practiced throughout his life. His true interest was in a literary
> >career and in associating with the great individuals of the time. He
> >met Samuel Johnson in 1763 and, having himself achieved fame with his
> >Account of Corsica (1768), produced Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides
> >with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1785). His great work, The Life of Samuel
> >Johnson, LL.D. appeared in 1791. Boswell recorded Johnson's
> >conversation so minutely that Johnson is better remembered today for his
> >sayings than for his own literary works. The curious combination of
> >Boswell's own character (he was vainglorious and dissolute) and his
> >genius at biography has led later critics to call him the greatest of
> >all biographers. Masses of Boswell manuscript, discovered in the 20th
> >cent. near Dublin, have enhanced his reputation.
> >
> >As for Mr. Johnson, the encyclopedia states that Samuel Johnson,
> >1709-84, was an English author. The leading literary scholar and critic
> >of his day, he helped to define the great period of English literature
> >known as the Augustan Age. He is as celebrated for his brilliant
> >conversation as for his writing. He began writing for London magazines
> >around 1737, on literary and political subjects. The anonymously
> >published poem London (1738) won the praise of Pope, and his reputation
> >was further enhanced by his poetic satire The Vanity of Human Wishes
> >(1749) and his moral essays in The Rambler (1750-52). Johnson's place
> >was permanently assured by his great Dictionary of the English Language
> >(1755), the first comprehensive English lexicon. Rasselas, a moral
> >romance, appeared in 1759, and the Idler essays between 1758 and 1760.
> >In 1763, Johnson met James Boswell, and his life thereafter is
> >documented in Boswell's great biography (1791). With Joshua Reynolds he
> >founded (1764) "The Club"; this elite gathering, with such members as
> >Goldsmith, Burke, and Garrick, was dominated by Johnson, whose wit and
> >aphorisms are still remembered. In 1765, he published his edition of
> >Shakespeare, the model for later editions. His last works include an
> >account (1775) of a trip with Boswell to the Hebrides and the perceptive
> >10-volume Lives of the Poets (1779-81). He was England's first complete
> >man of letters, and his influence was incalculable.
>