Via Bookninja (I think), an interesting bit of Johnsoniana: New research indicates Johnson gave up on his dictionary. I haven’t read anything of Anne McDermott’s, so I don’t know how convincing her argument is, but she’s claiming that Johnson secretly stopped work on the dictionary for years. She says that this is reflected in the Rambler:

“Once you tune into this, it becomes inescapable,” she says. “The melancholy tone of the Rambler has often been commented on, and the early volumes are full of essays about idleness, indolence and guilt over work undone.”

I’m not a Johnson expert (yet), but isn’t everything the man ever wrote also full of angst about his idleness, indolence, and guilt over work undone? Every time Boswell includes a quotation from Johnson’s Prayers and Meditations on Easter, the theme is self-recrimination for laziness and a pledge to do better in the year ahead. I have no trouble believing that Johnson did stall out on the dictionary work for some time, but I’m not sure that Rambler essays on the evils of procrastination are a good proof of it.

Anyhow, I’ll be curious to see what sort of evidence McDermott produces for this. Could be exciting.

1. Gotten my head knocked into a doorframe by my landlord. (Accidentally! He was checking a smoke alarm, I ducked under him, it was a bad scene.) The lump is just about gone now.
2. Sold my first story (!) — a short-short, to the wonderful people at Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.
3. Discovered that the dryer attached to my new apartment will function with a maximum load of two (2) pairs of wet pants. Total.
4. Read most of Eliza Haywood’s Love in Excess. It’s spectacular — particularly the scene in which the two main characters fall in lust over the deathbed of the female character’s father — but it still hasn’t topped the MONKEY FIGHT at the end of Evelina for absurdity. (MONKEY FIGHT. And people say c18 fiction is dull.) Then again, I haven’t quite finished it yet.
5. Saw Final Fantasy at the Parish, downtown. Final Fantasy is Owen Pallett, recently described in the Times as “the world’s most popular gay postmodern harpsichord nerd.” If you ever have a chance to see him, do. He does all his looping from his violin live onstage, including crazy percussive sounds made with bow and strings, and shouts into the violin’s belly; he has a strange lovely voice and a great little dorky Ralph Fiennes laugh; he wore a red headband that made him look like an anime character; and he ended the concert with a cover of Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy.” (His cover of “Peach, Plum, Pear” was excellent, too.) Definitely one of the best shows I’ve seen.

I have access to borrowed wireless in the apartment now, intermittently. We’re still counting down the days to our very own reliable connection, though.

I flew back to Austin on Thursday, the Day of No Liquids, and am settled in the new apartment. No internet till Aug. 28, though, which means I’ll be posting here rarely and reading my blogroll even less frequently. On the 28th, however, I’m going to roll around in my wireless signal like a puppy.