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Selected and Introduced for Short Work by writer and journalist, Bill Thompson
Every journalist should read Samuel Johnson from time to time. First, because the quality of his writing, especially in his essays, is enough to put even the most self-important hack in their place. Second, because he so often discusses why he writes and what writers do with a brutal honesty and lack of self-regard that we should all try to emulate. And third, because he is witty, entertaining and engaging.
The three essays I’ve chosen here cover the range. In Rambler 2 we see Johnson considering the nature of ambition and the many ways we find to deceive ourselves. In Idler 48 he speaks to every Twitter user and blogger of how we ‘play throughout life with the shadows of business’. And in Adventurer 95 he explores the process of writing in an age when, it seemed, there was nothing new under the sun.
They are the perfect refuge from the blogosphere and, since they require no external power, excellent for those long journeys when your laptop battery dies before you reach your destination and the only discarded newspaper to hand is yesterday’s Daily Express.
Bill Thompson
April 2008
Texts sourced from EText Library, University of Virginia and Project Gutenberg.
[...] 2- Short Work A series of public domain texts republished as Diffusion eBooks. Each month Proboscis will invite a…
Comment posted on 1-4-2009 at 23:37
[...] series of downloadable public-domain texts selected and introduced by guests. Works so far include three essays by Samuel Johnson,…
Comment posted on 6-11-2008 at 19:15
Bill has just written a great article on "The bustle of participation" for the New Statesman's 2008 New Media…
Comment posted on 6-6-2008 at 14:06
[...] they are also fun. You can get mine from their website - it’s a PDF which you print, fold…
Comment posted on 4-17-2008 at 08:00