"Samuel Johnson and the Stoics." PHILOSOPHER'S ZONE September 26, 2009.

Three hundred years ago this month, the great Samuel Johnson was born. He was a lexicographer, a poet, an essayist, a heroically good man and a tortured depressive. But was he also a philosopher? This week, we look at Johnson and at the ancient Stoics, whose sober philosophy combined with Christianity in Johnson's view of the world.

Download the audio here: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/.

O'Hagan, Andrew. "The Powers of Samuel Johnson." NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS October 8, 2009.

On the eve of his three-hundredth birthday, Johnson's glory lives in his multiplicity. He was never one thing. He was Janus-faced but also Janus-souled: investing as much of himself in the opposite of rancor and enmity as he did in rancor and enmity, and sometimes within the same half-hour. It is the main reason why James Bos-well was able to make him the subject of the best biography ever written: the two-minded biographer met his four-minded subject and a form of literary intimacy was born that time has neither breached nor weathered. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23111.

Rogers, Pat. "Cheerfulness Breaks In." NEW CRITERION (June 2009).

Martin, Peter. Samuel Johnson: a Biography. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2009. Meyers, Jeffrey. Samuel Johnson: the Struggle. New York: Basic, 2009. As time goes by, it generally softens asperities in the character of men and women from the past. We have quite a cuddly image of Ben Franklin, but to those who met him he could seem truculent and abrasive. Something rather different has happened in the case of Samuel Johnson. He used to be presented as a formidable figure—an overbearing literary potentate, if not a clubroom bore whose table you would avoid in the dining room. People thought him domineering and arrogant, qualities reflected in his nickname “the Great Cham.” Oldstyle British actors gave him a plummy upper-class bark, even though the evidence showed that he spoke with a strong Midlands accent, not too far from the nasal intonation you can hear on the streets of Birmingham today. It has all changed dramatically in the last half-century. In fact, the shift has its roots even further back, in an essay by an outstanding scholar from Berkeley, first published in 1944. Bertrand Bronson’s study “Johnson Agonistes” set the agenda for much of what has come out in recent decades, together with work by other writers emphasizing the “perilous balance” that Samuel maintained in his psychic health. It is not surprising, then, that a sense of internal conflict pervades these new versions of Johnson’s life—the first two, but not the last, of a crop of biographies marking the tercentenary of his birth in this year. . . . Read the whole review here: http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Cheerfulness-breaks-in-4098.