. . . he uniformly adhered to this strange opinion, which his indolent disposition made him utter: ‘No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.’ Numerous instances to refute this will occur to all who are versed in the history of literature. (Boswell)
What would Dr Johnson think of us blogheads? “Blogheads not blockheads, Sam! It’s a word that’s not in your Dictionary. Your name is still held in honour two centuries later, but no one reads your books now. You wanted money and you got it, but your devoted friend and biographer James Boswell was the greater writer. On his Life of Johnson your immortality depends.”
The coffee-houses of London were the Internet of Johnson’s day where networking happened. You could pick up gossip and try out witticisms on others; see and be seen. Men of science and founders of banks favoured coffee, which promoted clear thought, not the ale and wine which aroused sentiment and passion.
Why do we write? I keep coming back to this question. I’ve deciding that writing “because I must”—to keep my psychic equilibrium—is the best guarantee of sound content. “Writing for money” would be too corrupting. There are few honest ways to make a living. My current job hardly improves the world but does less harm than the prostitution of literary talent for gain.
In Dr Johnson’s time, you could be transported to the Colonies for poaching or stealing a loaf of bread to feed your starving children. You were a victim of economic conditions punished for trying to survive. You’d be sent to the Province of Georgia but after American Independence the British Government had to find somewhere else for their convicts, and that is how the Botany Bay settlement started in Australia. I am proud to be descended from such sons and daughters of simple need.
Necessity may be harsh, but it carves out clean lines. This is the basis of my infatuation with the ordinary. I’ve found joy in this rented accommodation in the scruffy side of town, taking as I find, dependent on the bounty of angels for my blessings. “Must” means absence of choice. Fie to choice and “freedom”! They breed pestilence of the worst sort.
I’m aware of course that necessity embraces shanty-towns and all the terrible compromises of poverty. Though I am not writing for money, I don’t think Johnson would call me a blockhead, once he understood today’s world. He too understood necessity, for having been brought up poor, he could hardly help being fixated on money. I feel that he didn’t enjoy writing & that’s why we don’t enjoy reading him, except through Boswell. By vocation he was a conversationalist, but not a blagger. Blagging, says Dictionary.com, is Caribbean English: “informal conversation in a public place, often deceitful”. Johnson was a trenchant man of principle, even though I disagree with many of his opinions. Everyone has the right to express their own truth, for it’s only falsehood which messes up this world.
What would Johnson have thought of those who not only write for money, but blag “spirituality” in their self-help books? The “New Age” is so tainted that it’s part—the worst part—of the consumerism it purports to replace. I was once told that priests reincarnate as dogs, by someone I view in retrospect as a kind of priest himself. Why did this assertion impress me so much that I can recall the time, the date (May ’72) and the exact spot where he said it—without recalling anything about the person? Perhaps because he’s a dog now.
7 thoughts on “Dr Johnson and blockheads”
rama
Many thanks from another blockhead bloghead! But to be honest – I did write for money, and I must thank God for this, as the money supported my social projects (slum community empowerment).
Charles Bergeman
Several of my family members have pen pals from around the world.In a way, I consider blogging and participation in Internet communities a form of letter writing.My letters are not meant to be works of literature. Just simple communication between people. An effort to understand one another. Sometimes to comfort or be comforted, face a fear, confront an injustice, or test an idea.In any case, it is a means of staying connected.Your writings are different. There is an insightful, enlightening prose to your work.It has literary merit. Where other bloggers clumsily scribe their thoughts in a meandering way, yours touches the heart.Perhaps it is that way due to the fact that you have not sought compensation. I have felt my best artwork was done without a commercial interest.
Hayden
I’ve written every day since I was ten. Before I can “write” – not for money, but for communication (even with myself – I learn what I think through writing carefully) I have to shake the noise out of my head. Writing, blood, ink, life – it’s all one to me. Quite a different experience of writing from Dr. Johnson’s!
Fleming
I’ve always felt that Dr Johnson was the least appealing of English writers — as a man and as an author — and also one of the least intelligent and intuitive. Interesting that the insufferable blockhead Boswell made famous should call much better writers “blockheads”.I never associated financial ambitions with my writing except once. I was well aware of the brain-dead state of the publishing “industry” in America, and had just read Spengler’s “Decline of the West”, which seemed correctly to indicate that at our late stage of the cycle of a civilization the arts were in terminal decline and engineers ruled. I was teaching college English at the time, and I complained to my office mate that I couldn’t think of any reason to write even though writing had been my life’s ambition. He said, “Why not write for money? That would at least be a motive.” He told me about a humorous best seller of that season, “The Man Who Wrote Dirty Books.” So I read some paperback “dirty books” from the nearest drugstore (yes, in America they sell paperbacks in chemists’ shops). I found that I could write them quickly and invariably sell them . . . thus proving that writing for money indeed does corrupt. It speaks well of me that I found the formula so boring and the products so trite that I quit after about five books and never did that again. Instead I devoted myself for a year to a “literary” novel, which of course was never published.
ghetufool
a beautiful post, unlike any others. this question also confronts me as why we write in blogs? definitely not for money, but is that we crave for something else, which money can’t buy? or that we need to communicate to ourselves by writing something and welcome the comments as an add on. i don’t know, i didn’t get the answer so far.but one thing i know for sure, your writing has catched up with a new flavour? is that the employment and getting busy everyday? for i sense, the fast pace of your lifestyle has definitely catched up in your writing.
Kathy
Why do I collect quotes? I don’t know? It’s something I started a few years ago and I’m still doing it. The Zen masters say don’t get attached to anything…yet I find myself attached to a lot of things. I’m not a zen monk or a nun…but I enjoy reading their writings and viewing their art.Bloggers too! 🙂
Vincent
Blogging is such a new form of art or literature, we are still extending its limits & discovering what it can do. I remember in 1993 I had the idea to design multimedia “mazes” of words, pictures and music on CD-ROM which was the new thing then. A friend was designing one on Victorian London, with special emphasis on Jack the Ripper. I was planning one to be called “Windows on Other Worlds”, hoping Microsoft would sue me for using such a title. I would explain it was not inspired by them.The same friend told me about the World-Wide-Web, which I had never seen. He was Nigel Woodhead*, whose prophetic book, Hypertext and Hypermedia: Theory and Applications (1991) is still available on Amazon.
*We’d worked together on contracts with the newly-formed Eurotunnel—Le Shuttle—and kept in touch for a while, He often encountered Marianne Faithfull in Chelsea pubs—another source of envy to me. I’d known her eccentric grandfather Theodore Faithfull, a psychoanalyst in his old age.