More Johnsonia

 A few books have piled up. I'd rather they did that than leave me wondering what to re-read.

Chichester's Oxfam Bookshop on Tuesday lured me in with F.W. Harvey, Soldier, Poet by Anthony Boden, not necessarily essential on account of the poetry itself but for its mentions of Chosen Hill, Over - pronounced 'oover', Framilode and such places, me having been partly adopted by Gloucester for formative year purposes. It's a characterful and picturesque part of England, as many are, and its people are often understandably attached to it, none more so than was Ivor Gurney although strictly speaking Edward Thomas who lived near here is the one to go to for poems.

Two copies of Erik Satie: Three Piece Suite by Ian Penman arrived today which is a sign of oncoming senility in me, or just carelessness, but I've an idea who might benefit from the surplus copy as a present to one who deserves it for their work. Ian Penman wrote for the NME in the late 70's when it still served as some kind of scripture for those hipsters who thought it mattered, and we did. And by now we can look back on who came out of that hot house school of pop music journalism. Ian MacDonald who went on to write so brilliantly about Shostakovich; Danny Baker, the radio broadcaster of choice for my generation. Not quite so much the tired rock iconographies of Charles Shaar Murray, the user-friendly novels of Tony Parsons or the increasingly predictable contrariness of Julie Burchill who I might have had a brief, equally contrary crush on for about two weeks then but among such a shark tank of thrusting talent, I'm guessing I'd have preferred to have been reviewing The New Seekers for Record Mirror.

Andrew Gant's The Making of Handel's Messiah adds to the Handel books as he goes head-to-head with Shostakovich in that department. I wonder how much information is duplicated on my shelves about Larkin, Thom Gunn, Auden, Elizabeth Bishop and especially Shakespeare but the more times one reads things the more chance one has of remembering it. Or maybe not at the age of 65.

But, bought from the Birthplace Museum in Lichfield, Dictionary Johnson by James L. Clifford is thorough and highly immersible. One needs to appreciate the financial hardship, at least until he was awarded the pension that his dictionary definition had so disdained, and the physical awkwardness and especially the anti-colonial sentiments that make him such a progressive C18th Tory. But what I think impresses me most about such a garrulous but also sympathetic man is how he sees,

'human experience [as] the empty recepticle which cannot tolerate its own emptiness',

an insight attributed to Arieh Sachs in a footnote and one of the most profound bits of commentary I've seen about anyone, anywhere, ever. Perhaps Arieh Sachs needs following up if he's findable.

When one is tired of Dr. Johnson, one might say, one is tired of life. It's possible I've used that before even if nobody else has but it comes with the rejoinder that maybe eventually he was. Auden said he felt as much; there's reason to think Shakespeare might have been. There will be other examples. There might be some consolation to be had in that enough is eventually enough, one has done what one could for better or worse and that will have to do.

Meanwhile, one keeps 'buggering on' if not quite so impossibly as Churchill did on the off chance that something truly worthwhile will yet transpire. Perhaps it will.