Self-Hugging

Andrew O’Hagan

Boswell's Presumptuous Task by Adam Sisman
James Boswell’s ‘Life of Johnson’: Research Edition: Vol. II edited by Bruce Redford and Elizabeth Goldring
Samuel Johnson: The Life of an Author by Lawrence Lipking
Dr Johnson's London by Liza Picard

One of the general effects of hero-worship is its tendency to marshal resentment in those who claim themselves no party to the admiration. A good example of this offers itself at the opening of Vanity Fair – ‘A Novel without a Hero’ – when the single-minded Becky Sharp, high in a coach bound for Russell Square, flings a copy of Johnson’s Dictionary out of the window to land on the grass at the feet of her former teacher, a sworn disciple of the Great Lexicographer. ‘So much for the Dictionary,’ says Becky Sharp as the carriage pulls away, ‘and, thank God, I’m out of Chiswick.’

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From the LRB letters page: [ 16 November 2000 ] Isobel Grundy.

Andrew O’Hagan’s The Atlantic Ocean, a collection of essays on Britain and America, many of which were first published in the London Review, will be published in June. Be Near Me, his last novel, won the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize award for fiction.