According to my Blogspot records, this is the 100th post in my editorial box. Since I only started Mr. Rostan's Thoughts About Things three months ago, I can say that I successfully managed to amaze myself…and I want to thank anyone who has read any posts since I began. This blog never would have happened if not for my imminent commencement at the University of Chicago, which prompted me to find a new outlet for my literary thoughts, and at Lisa's suggestion started this up. Therefore, it seems only appropriate that my first milestone post relate to the man who helped get me into the university, Samuel Johnson.
I am currently beginning a short paper on Johnson, and as a sort of "taster" in research terms I decided to read a few issues of his periodical the Rambler, and something peculiar caught my eye. Johnson is probably the patron saint among authors for biography…his own biographies mixing history and literary criticism have won worldwide renown, and he was a great advocate against turning biography into hagiography or panegyric. He believed, and James Boswell quoted him on this, that the biography needed to present a full, unblemished, warts-and-all portrait of the subject, and that only concentrating on their highest morals or greatest moments resulted in seriously flawed works. In Rambler No. 60 he urged biographers to not hold back in giving honest descriptions of their subjects' flaws, and also asserted that you could read an entire history of a person from "pedigree" to "funeral" and not understand them or their character as well as if you had access to "a short conversation with one of his servants." For Johnson, the full spectrum of the individual in a world where we are communal in desires and lifestyles mattered greatly.
Hence my perplexity upon reading one of his most famous essays, Rambler No. 4, dealing with the role of the novel in society and how novels should be written. Johnson and I are on the same page in believing in the rhetorical value of literature and that the novel has the power to depict real life …indeed, it must, for an art designed for a mass audience has to be believed by a mass audience or else it loses value. But in this case, Johnson turns moralist, censor, almost totalitarian when considering how to harness literature's power as a tool to reach humans.
"{Modern fiction is} written chiefly to the young, the ignorant, and the idle…{it is} the entertainment of minds unfurnished with ideas, and therefore easily susceptible of impressions; not fixed by principles, and therefore easily following the current of fancy; not informed by experience, and consequently open to every false suggestion and partial account. That the highest degree of reverence should be paid to youth, and that nothing indecent should be suffered to approach their eyes and ears, are precepts extorted by sense and virtue from an ancient writer, by no means eminent for chastity of thought."
It goes on, as Johnson instructs writers of fiction to focus on the promotion of virtue, to lambast vice in all of its forms, and to take care not to suggest virtue and vice can co-exist in the body of a person for good effect, as his direct contemporaries Richardson and Fielding were suggesting. In short, he is of the opinion that fiction MUST fit in with the prevalent moral code of the day, and therefore be, wittingly or not, a tool to promote ideology. How does this square with the respect for individualism and devotion to honesty he had for the biography?
Not wanting to attack Johnson's integrity, close analysis of No. 4 reveals a possible answer. In two significant paragraphs, Johnson meditates on the special power of the writer so important to the creative process. "The authors are at liberty, though not to invent, yet to select objects, and to cull from the mass of mankind, those individuals on upon which the attention ought most to be employed…It is justly considered as the greatest excellency of art, to imitate nature; but it is necessary to distinguish those parts of nature most worthy for imitation." A novelist can CHOOSE which parts of life he or she wants to depict.
A novelist as the same duty to honesty as a biographer, but a biographer is given an already-present series of facts, the life of the subject. They may interpret these facts as they choose, but they cannot ignore the facts. A novelist, with all life to choose from, utilizes honesty in a far more selective format. They pick which sides of the infinite expanse of life to document and explore in depth. You can describe the positive effects of honesty or the negative effects of adultery at length and never write a dishonest word. You may ignore the other sides of those coins, how there may indeed be vice in excessive virtue and so on, but this is omission, not deceit. Technically, still honest. You cannot fault a person too strongly for making a series of aesthetic choices. Johnson, genius he was, took this argument to the next level. It may be faulty, but it is rather accurate, and it fits much in keeping with his personality.
Finally, judging by Johnson's attitude toward his own and others' conducts, it is reasonable to guess that he felt even an immoral life could be an instructive biography by delineating the steps the young should not take, and if it were written with structure and style to subtly turn against the vices.
Or maybe it was an exercise in masochism, this famous psychological self-flagellator hoping his flaws would be put on public display by those who cared enough to tell the truth.
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