A new light on The Life

JSA Vice-President Kevin Hart, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Monash University, showed us a new way to look at Boswell's Life of Johnson in the Sixth Annual Fleeman Memorial Lecture delivered after the Annual General Meeting on September 18 - Johnson's birthday.

Introducing the speaker, JSA President Paul Brown said Kevin was the author of three volumes of criticism, the most recent being the Samuel Johnson and the culture of property, newly published by Cambridge. In addition, Kevin has produced seven collections of his poetry, the latest being Wicked Heat (Paperbark Press) and edited The Oxford book of Australian religious verse.

Kevin, a leading post-modernist scholar, recently arranged the highly successful visit to Australia by Professor Jacques Derrida. A commentary on Kevin's Fleeman lecture is given by Paul Brown elsewhere in this issue.

The AGM attracted an attendance of around 50, including two new members, Tony Thomas and Susan Hudson, who had been "recruited" by our delegation to the Dickens Fellowship's 75th annual celebrations.

We were also pleased to see Greg and Di Veitch, which had once again, travelled from Perth specially to attend the meeting. The meeting also approved the co-opting of members Barrie Sheppard an d Denis Le Neuf to the committee.

How to read a page of Boswell
Professor Kevin Hart - Sixth Annual Fleeman Lecture
A report by Paul Brown

"What is the use of a book," thought Alice, "wtihout pictures or conversations?"

On September 18, 1999, Johnson's birthday, the JSA was privileged to hear JSA Vice-president Professor Kevin Hart, poet and post-modernist, deliver the Sixth Annual Fleeman Lecture. We were transported across the English Channel and gently introduced to the Gallic world of deconstruction. Johnson the Europhile would have approved.

Accusations levelled at post-modernist scholars have ranged from subjectivism, obscurantism and rhetoric to pluralistic statement of the obvious. Our speaker demonstrated that the post-modernist approach is none of these. Post-modern readings emerge from the page itself. They rely on the literary canon but transcend it. In the words of Lewis Carroll: All win prizes.

Kevin opened his talk with some literary sleuthing. He alternated between canonical and anti-canonical critics past and present, in a manner reminiscent of Ackroyd's fictional dialogue of detection with Chatterton, Dee and Wren. Adler's formalistic approach in the Britannica Great Books project was extensively contrasted with Richards' pre-modern adumbration of irony, ambiguity and complexity in the Principles of Literary Criticism. Traditional readings of the ecclesiastical canon and sacred texts were apposed to those of the secular tradition, exemplified by Bloom's Western Literary Canon.

Shifting a register to the field of hermeneutics, ecclesiastical and then secular critiques were compared. Literal and historical exegesis, Midrash and allegory, were contrasted with Knox's non-Mosaic reading of Genesis - CWD and 2 Rs!

This led to an examination of Boswell's Life represented as a sacred text by the "Boswellian fundamentalists". Croker sought to use Boswell's own method in his redaction of the Life of Johnson, and is so doing was said to have perpetrated cultural violence. Birkbeck Hill's Life of Johnson virtually ousts the text with comprehensive foot, thigh, chest and even neck notes! Such textual violence is nothing to the battles characterising the "cultural wars" resulting from post-modernist readings. The latter begin by emphasising the impossibility of conventional reading. They seek textual desacrilisation and universalisation of culture, with the creation of new and more comprehensive syntheses.

They seize and elaborate upon oppositions, possibilities, paradoxes and polarities - classical and romantic, synchronic and diatonic, dimensional and categorical, digital and analogue, among many others. They adore Heisenberg and uncertainty. Derrida interprets pages from Plato, Hart from Boswell's Life of Johnson. They make the page live in interesting and valuable new ways.

There are at least two lives, recorded in a "nuanced dialogue" on each page: Boswell's biography of Johnson, and Johnson's autobiography as Boswell believed it might be written. Each page prefigures the death of Johnson, the linguistic imminence of death reflecting Johnson's terror at the imminence of his own demise.

Hart the deconstructionist showed us how to read a page of Boswell by identifying these interpenetrating themes, "cutting around the gaps", identifying contrasts, contradictions, possibilities and alternatives rather than trying to fill them. He brought then together as poetic and transcendent wholes that spoke to us anew.

The Johnson Society of Australia Sixth Annual General Meeting, September 18, 1999

President's Report

President Paul Brown reviewed the major activities of the Society during the year, including the Sixth Annual Seminar, the Fleeman Memorial Lecture by Nicholas Hudson, the Christmas party, the visit to the National Gallery and guided tour of 18th Century portraiture, and JSA representation at the 75th anniversary of the Dickens Fellowship. He reported that membership was now at 106, and welcomed several new members who attended the AGM.

The JSA Home Page on the internet continued to attract interest, and the committee was arranging for the registration of our own domain name.

The JSA continued to enjoy fruitful relations with sister societies in the United Kingdom, the United States and Japan. Proceeds from a special book sale at the 1999 Christmas party would be contributed to a fund to help in the restoration of Dr Johnson's House in Gough Square.

Treasurer's Report.

The Treasurer, Ronald Knights, presented his report which showed that the Society had a credit balance of $2882.60 at June 30, 1999.

Publications

Publications Editor Paul Tankard reported that the third volume of the JSA Papers had been produced, and the first copies of Nicholas Hudson's 1998 Fleeman Lecture had been received.

Election of officers

Moved by Roy Lanigan and seconded by Jack Nystrom that all present office-bearers and committee members be re-elected. (Carried).

Moved by Paul Tankard and seconded by Paul Brown thast Barrie Sheppard by co-opted to the committee. Bryan Reid moved and Bronwen Hickman seconded, that Denis Le Neuf should likewise be co-opted. (Both motions carried).

Other business

It was decided that a special fund-raising competition be held at the Christmas Party.

Publisher wanted

British author and free-lance journalist Dave Randle has sent us an email (after visiting our web site), asking for help in publishing a novel based on the life of Dr Johnson's black servant Francis Barber.

Dave got the idea from an actual interview with Barber by a reporter from The Gentleman's Magazine and printed in 1793, nine years after Johnson's death. Dave's book reconstructs Barber's life, explores his attitudes and relationship to Johnson, and goes some way to explain his later penury.

The author has sent us the first two chapters of the work, which is entitled A Troublesome Disorder, and they are enough to suggest that anyone interested in Johnson or in 18th Century life generally, would find it fascinating reading.

Anyone who might be able to help find a publisher for the work, should get in touch in the first place, with JSA Secretary Bryan Reid, who can then pass on further details.

Notes from the Western Idler

A careful reading of the daily papers confirms the oft-made assertion that Samuel Johnson is the third most prolific source of quotations or references in English literature after the Bible and Shakespeare.

Of course, many of the quotations are simply wrong or wrongly attributed. A perfect example of this was published recently in The West Australian on Thursday, Sepetmber 30. Len Findlay, the sporting editor of Perth's only daily, writing about the recent spate of women taking part in boxing matches, wrote"

"Women boxing is, to this writer at least, like Pavlov having his dogs walk on their hind legs; the only interest is in it being done, for there is no chance of it being done well." It's obviously some time since Len read Boswell's Life. As you will know, the course of the reference is Johnson's famous remark made to Boswell on Sunday, July 31, 1763. Boswell reports:
"Next day, Sunday July 31, I told him that I had been that morning at a meeting of the people called Quakers, where I heard a woman preach. Johnson: "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all."

A further and more accurate allusion to Johnson appeared in The Weekly Telegraph, September 22-28. This journal is a weekly summary of all that is best in the preceding week from the august London Daily Telegraph. The cartoon shows a disgusted Samuel Johnson stepping down from the plinth which is erected outside St Clement Dane's church in Fleet Street, on which is engraved "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life."

Johnson's departure is prompted by having seen a short list of the candidates for the forthcoming election for the position of Lord Mayor of London. Among those named are Lord Archer, the popular writer of airport novels, "Red Ken" Livingston, one of the architects of political correctness, and the actor, Glenda Jackson!

To be a member of the Johnsonian world is to be a member of a great freemasonry. Early last week I was sitting in my office feeling very disenchanted with a life in the law and pondering the fact that little of interest had come my way to add to my Boswell/Johnson collection, As I opened my mail, I received a letter from Professor David L. Vander Meulen, Professor of English at the University of Virginia. David is a member of our Society, a distinguished scholar and a leading member of that eminent group The Johnsonians. Our patron, Mary, Viscountess Eccles, was the founding force behind the formation oft his formidable group of collectors, scholars and Johnson enthusiasts in the 1940s.

The Johnsonians publish a beautiful keepsake for each annual meeting and this year, that keepsake is Samuel Johnson in the mind of Thomas Jefferson, by James G. Basker, with Thomas Jefferson's letter to Herbert Croft of October 30, 1798, in which jefferson discusses his view of Johnson's Dictionary.

This year, the Johnsonians met for their annual birthday celebrations in the Dome Room of the Rotunda at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, which, as David told me, is "the room that Thomas Jefferson designed to serve as the university's library.

You all know of my delight in Johnsonian ephemera and, to my joy, David included the menu for the dinner and the menu issued to celebrate and commemorate Martin Battestin's talk Dr Johnson and the case of Henry Fielding. The menu reproduces the recognizance entered into by Johnson when he appeared before Fielding at Bow Street in March, 1749.

A close examination of the menu revealed that Johnson would have had no difficulty in the describing the meal as one "you could invite a man to." The guests enjoyed a roasted pear, walnut and Rocquefort tart followed by oven-roasted game hen with wild rice and leeks, and Californian wines.

For some weeks past there appears to be a considerable increase in the publication of books about books. Amongst those I have noticed and acquired recently are:

• * A Passion for Books, edited by Dale Salwak and published in London by Macmillan Press, 1999. Nineteen contributors have provided original essays looking at the past and future of books, the publishing industry, reading and collecting.
• * For the Love of Books, edited by Ronald B. Schwartz, published 1999 by Grosset-Putnam in New York. One hundred and fifteen authors, mainly American, discuss the books which have most influenced them.
• * To Convey Intelligence, the Spectator 1928-1998, by Simon Courtauld, published by Profile Books (an imprint of Octopus Publishing Group). Whilst more a coffee table volume it does make a handsome companion to At Home with Books, to which I have previously referred.

Finally, I am off to Sydney at the end of the month for the ANZAAB Book Fair. I intend to search both the fair and Sydney's bookshops for Johnsonian material and I will report the results in the next issue of the Southern Johnsonian. I regret that I won't be able to attend the Christmas Party, but I wish you all good things for the coming festive season.

Member Profile - Jack Nystrom

How an ex-policeman Met The Great Cham

The JSA has always prided itself on the diversity of vocations and personalities among our membership. As far as we know, foundation member Jack Nystrom is our only ex-policeman, a former member of the Queensland Police Force, and later the Royal Papua and New Guinea Constabulary. Jack first became seriously interested in Johnson and his works in the late 80s when he came under the proselytising influence of Secretary Bryan Reid, who was then doing some consultancy work for Telecom Protective Services with Jack as his principal contact.

It was not, however, Jack's first acquaintance with Johnson. He confesses that he first heard of The Great Cham many years earlier, when he found a current girlfriend reading The Life in bed. Jack confesses that it created an indelible impression.

After his police service, Jack got into the security profession, ending up as Assistant Director for Telecom Protective Services responsible for policy planning and operations before he took early retirement in 1991.

When Jack joined the Queensland Police at the age of 19, the next bed to his in the training barracks dormitory in Brisbane was occupied by one William G. Hayden, later leader of the Opposition and then Governor-General.

After five years' service in Queensland, the spirit of adventure led Jack to Papua-New Guinea where he served for eight years until 1966. In that time, he did virtually every kind of policing work, including criminal investigation.

At the age of 33, with PNG independence coming closer, Jack decided on a change of career direction and, after a spell with the Commonwealth Education Department administering the intake of Colombo Plan students, he took up a security job with the RAN at the Garden Island Dockyard, and later with the Department of Supply.

He then became State Security officer for the then Postmaster-General's Department, eventually rising to a senior managerial role at Telecom headquarters for the Protective Services Branch, acting at various times as Acting Director.

Johnson's attraction for Jack is the Doctor's "giant intellect", his great sense of humour and his ability to play a special role in his circle, and to be aware of this. Jack sees the 18th Century in general as a period in which great geniuses were produced, with Johnson among the greatest.

He says membership of the Johnson Society of Australia gives him a focus of interest on the period and has brought him into contact with a wide range of people whom he finds interesting and well-informed.

"Attending JSA meetings is like working a mine," he says. "There is always a new gem to be discovered."

Lady Eccles President of The Johnson Society of London

Our Patron, Mary, Viscountess Eccles, PhD, D.Litt, has been elected President of The Johnson Society of London following the death of the former President, the Very Rev Dr E.F. Carpenter. Congratulations go from the Johnson Society of Australia to Lady Eccles, on her new honor.

A Johnsonian Quiz: No 21

1: Who was Master of Pembroke College when Johnson was a student there?
2: Where, according to Johnson, are the best sausages in the world to be found?
3:"Walpole was a minister given by the King to the people; Pitt was a minister given be the people to the King - as an....?
4: "The misfortune of...in conversation is this; he goes on without knowing how he is to get off." Who?
5: "I would have saved him the trouble of cutting off a leg; I would not have left him a leg to cut off." To whom was Johnson referring, and why?
6: What was "the only book that ever took (Johnson) out of bed sooner than he wished to rise"?
7: Which contemporary writer was, in Johnson's opinion, "a barren rascal"?
8: "He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him GREAT." Who?

Answers to Quiz No 20

1: He read in bed by the light of a candle which, because of his short sight, he had to hold close to his face.
2: "Blinking Sam"
3: bark
4: poverty
5: Opinion
6: Hogarth about Johnson
7: arithmetic
8: Tom Thumb

Obituary
Dr John Thomson

With great regret, we record the death of Dr John M. Thomson, internationally-recognised music scholar and former member of the JSA, whom members will recall for his fascinating presentation on music in the time of Johnson, at our 1996 annual seminar.

John Thomson, a New Zealander who spent many years in England, wrote widely on musical matters, his works including the award-winning 1990 Biographical Dictionary of New Zealand Composers and the Oxford History of NZ Music.

After arriving in London in 1961, he quickly gained a reputation as a writer, editor and mentor to many musicians and singers. He became a member of the music panel of the Arts Council of Britain and in 1973 he founded, and became editor of Early Music, a magazine still regarded as the standard by which other such publications are measured.

He returned to New Zealand in 1983, where he had a fellowship with the Stout Research Centre at Victoria University, Wellington. In 1991, the university conferred on him an honorary doctorate in music.

His invitation to participate in the 1996 seminar came through Secretary Bryan Reid, who had known John many years earlier in his native New Zealand.