Paul Johnson

Random venting:
I stumbled across Paul Johnson's book Creators on a recent trip so I had time to read it. I had enjoyed what I'd read of Johnson's Intellectuals and History of the Jews, but this is tedious. He makes the kind of overwrought statements about literature that the late Richard Armour used to have fun with in his work.
More imortantly, it's not about "the courage of creation," as Johnson claims in the introduction, but rather about what he likes about various artists and writers. There's a few good chapters -- Mark Twain in particular -- but other chapters, such as the one on Shakespeare, in which one doesn't learn much about the subject except that Johnson thinks Shakespeare rocks. Of course, he doesn't use that phrase, and I don't think you have to convince anyone that Shakespeare was a major dude. Anyway, this is what happens when you sell enough books: You can write damn near anything and get published. So it goes.
It was not, as commonly believed, Linda Ellerbee (Ellerbe? I've seen it spelled both ways) who first used that phrase. It was Kurt Vonnegut. I really liked Vonnegut when I was a young feller, but found him also rather tedious as I got older. Where you stand depends upon where you sit, most of the time. I don't know who said that first.
The danger all writers face is moving into subjects about which they don't know enough (and I expect Johnson knows a lot about many of the subjects he has explored); it is in those moments that our ignorance is most exposed. I find that life has indeed been an endless search for knowledge, but each tidbit gained seems only to expose even greater areas of ignorance. Mark Twain may have said something to that effect, with much greater eloquence than I am managing at presence.
As it turns out, Johnson is an arch-conservative, a former speechwriter for Margaret Thatcher. In Intellectuals, which I had only read selections, he uses the often lamentable personal habits of famous thinkers to discredit their ideas. Of course, all the thinkers he doesn't like are lefties -- no surprise there. To my mind, both arch-conservatives and radicals see some things and miss some others. (Which is why I try to paint myself as a militant moderate -- take what works from anyone, regardless of their stripe, discard the rest. The truth, as it might exist, is often in the middle.)
My book, Wings of Power: Boeing and the Politics of Growth in the Northwest, got pretty good reviews from local folks, who understood what I was talking about. It pretty much got ripped by other academics, mostly not from around here. I think this has largely to do with the fact that I didn't automatically blast business as evil. In the case of managing growth, I didn't think they were. It was frustrating but also amusing.
I actually talked to one reviewer, a University of Washington professor (one of my former students says he's a really boring teacher -- sorry, I couldn't resist), because he so completely missed some things in the book. He didn't respond to that (it was an e-mail conversation), but did say he'd actually enjoyed the book. Right.
I am a pimple on the butt of academia; I'm not under any illusions on that score. And if you haven't read Wings, don't worry: You're not alone.