It is, and I've always felt that someone should write a novel about Garrick's big Shakespeare festival at Stratford which was the single event most responsible for changing Shakespeare's status into a national treasure. Also, compared with moody superstar Edmund Kean who came after, the sheer, well, normalcy of Garrick's life style when not on stage is amazing. He just seems to have been a nice person.
As to the author not liking Boswell as a person, well, it happens. I mean, I've written an entire post as to why I like him, so I won't repeat that all here, but limit myself to a few bullet points not related to Boswell as an author:
- for all his celebrity seeking outs, Boswell is also the guy who defends luckless thieves of sheep, gets his guy off the first time but not again eight years later for the same offense, and then stays with him in his last hours so he isn't alone and comforts him; this isn't a famous highwayman, just a poor Scotsman named John Reid unkown to anyone (and who would be unknown to us, too, if he wasn't in Boswell's journal)
- (Boswell also defends convict and ocean crosser Mary Bryant when she makes it back to England, but since the ocean crossing won her fame, I don't suppose that counts in the same way)
- when his little daughter Veronica decides there is no God and pronounces this out loud, Boswell, religious 18th century Protestant Scotsman with a very strict authoritarian father he's on bad terms with, does not react by punishing his daughter or admonishing her or frightening her with outwardly shown disapproval/shock. First he seeks consults a self help book checks whether there are any parenting books advising what to do. Not finding any to his satisfaction, he next decides to ask Veronica how she got the idea, not aggressively (we know because he gives us the entire scene in dialogue), and finding she decided because she got told God took *dead person X* if there was no God, there would be no dead people, patiently explains this would not be the case, so Veronica is good with God again
- when Johson and the other guys in the club think you could be happy with any random woman in marriage, Boswell - who can't stop having casual sex, but also loves his wife, disagrees: I have a strong imagination that I could not have been so happy in marriage with any other woman as with my dear wife. I cannot tell why, so as to give any rational explanation to the others. I only know or fancy that there are qualities and compositions of qualities (to talk in musical metaphor) which in the course of our lives appear to me in her that please me more than what I have perceived in any other woman, and which I cannot separate from her identity.
- Boswell comes off way better than Hester Thrale (in particular) or several of Johnson's other friends when it comes to Francis Barber, Johnson's black servant who also was Johnson's main heir (with which Hawkings and Thrale and several others, but not Boswell who liked and supported him, had a problem); more about this in my review of Francis Barber's biography here, and as you know, I think that how you treat those below you in the hierarchy, especially if you yourself have fallen on hard times, is one of the best testimony's of character.
Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough
As to the author not liking Boswell as a person, well, it happens. I mean, I've written an entire post as to why I like him, so I won't repeat that all here, but limit myself to a few bullet points not related to Boswell as an author:
- for all his celebrity seeking outs, Boswell is also the guy who defends luckless thieves of sheep, gets his guy off the first time but not again eight years later for the same offense, and then stays with him in his last hours so he isn't alone and comforts him; this isn't a famous highwayman, just a poor Scotsman named John Reid unkown to anyone (and who would be unknown to us, too, if he wasn't in Boswell's journal)
- (Boswell also defends convict and ocean crosser Mary Bryant when she makes it back to England, but since the ocean crossing won her fame, I don't suppose that counts in the same way)
- when his little daughter Veronica decides there is no God and pronounces this out loud, Boswell, religious 18th century Protestant Scotsman with a very strict authoritarian father he's on bad terms with, does not react by punishing his daughter or admonishing her or frightening her with outwardly shown disapproval/shock. First he
seeks consults a self help bookchecks whether there are any parenting books advising what to do. Not finding any to his satisfaction, he next decides to ask Veronica how she got the idea, not aggressively (we know because he gives us the entire scene in dialogue), and finding she decided because she got told God took *dead person X* if there was no God, there would be no dead people, patiently explains this would not be the case, so Veronica is good with God again- when Johson and the other guys in the club think you could be happy with any random woman in marriage, Boswell - who can't stop having casual sex, but also loves his wife, disagrees: I have a strong imagination that I could not have been so happy in marriage with any other woman as with my dear wife. I cannot tell why, so as to give any rational explanation to the others. I only know or fancy that there are qualities and compositions of qualities (to talk in musical metaphor) which in the course of our lives appear to me in her that please me more than what I have perceived in any other woman, and which I cannot separate from her identity.
- Boswell comes off way better than Hester Thrale (in particular) or several of Johnson's other friends when it comes to Francis Barber, Johnson's black servant who also was Johnson's main heir (with which Hawkings and Thrale and several others, but not Boswell who liked and supported him, had a problem); more about this in my review of Francis Barber's biography here, and as you know, I think that how you treat those below you in the hierarchy, especially if you yourself have fallen on hard times, is one of the best testimony's of character.