A sentence I never expected to use: James Lileks is blogging about Boswell’s London Journal:

Oh, I love that. Not just because Boswell was 22, full of vim and pretense and hungry for fame, but because it’s obvious he poured himself a tall glass of port and set to writing and was highly pleased with his own genius – unaware, of course, that 200 years later his work would be held up, examined, and dismissed in a footnote. A footnote in his own book.

It’s all a caution for young writers. Your chances of being another Dr. Johnson are microscopic. Your chances of even being Boswell to a Johnson are remote. But keep at it.

I might expect such a topic from Lisa – she wrote a paper on Boswell, for reasons I still fail to understand. I suspect the inherent lasciviousness of Presbyterians may have something to do with it. At any rate, it gave me an opportunity to tell everyone “I gave my roommate gonorrhea” — in plush form. Named Boswell.

I mailed it to her parents’ house, too. The real wonder is that she still speaks to me.

Anyway, read Lileks’ current bleat for Boswell, and to never hear the word “quaint” the same way again. Also, more Dark Knight, if you somehow are not yet tired of hearing about that.

Filed under: Reviews