A model biography: Damrosch keeps it succinct, without skimping on details; he combines information about Swift with information about his age; he doesn't take much for granted, but also isn't condescending. Also, it's perfectly readable. You could say "it reads like a novel," except that most novels don't read so well.

Swift is the perfect subject for a biography, so that helps as well. We have a bunch of letters, but not a library's worth; there's a solid biographical tradition that isn't completely overwhelming; and, most importantly, his life is fascinating no matter how you present it. His birth is shrouded in mythology, as is his early family life. He worked for one of the foremost literary stylists of the previous generation, and became the foremost prose stylist of his own time. He worked for two of the most powerful men in British politics, knew royalty, and somehow managed to keep his head about the whole thing. He may or may not have been secretly married to one woman, who may or may not have been related to him, and may or may not have cheated on her with another woman--and, in general, he seems to have been a ladies man.

More important than all of this, however, is his own writing. I think there's a real distinction between people who get Swift, and people who do not. Oddly, many of those who do not write academic articles about him.

If you can't make a biography out of all that, you shouldn't be writing biographies. On the other hand, there's a large set of verbs and adverbs that mean something completely different in biographies than they do in ordinary English, and Leo isn't immune to their lure: must have, possibly, perhaps, maybe, certainly, assuredly, definitely etc etc... Biographers of a previous generation used them to cover up the biases of their own age. Damrosch points out when previous biographers have done this for Swift, which gets a little annoying (put it in footnotes, not the main text) Then he does exactly the same thing. Swift 'must have' had doubts about his religion, because he was so smart.* Swift 'must have' been sleeping with Vanessa, because he was funny and smart and funny, smart people sleep around. Well well, what are we here for, but to provide the next generation of biographers something to complain about.

My only real complaint is that Damrosch fails to put readers of the 'Disgusting Poems' in their place. The poems are a hilarious send-up of romantic love, but literary critics being professors, they must find some kind of perversion or disturbance behind them. After all, if a man uses the word 'shit' in a poem, he must be utterly immoral/anally fixated/repressing his sexuality/subversive/a space alien. He couldn't possibly, you know, find it funny to end a poem with the word 'shit'. Most poems still end with some guff about My Mistress's Eyes are Black as Dried Figs or whatever, and Swift's coruscating poems should be celebrated far more than they are simply for being funny and acidic.

Anyway, of all the anecdotes about Swift, my favorite is the Bickerstaff case. But one snippet I learned from this book is almost as good. A 'science writer' read Gulliver's Travels in 1969. He assumed it was recently released, and tried to contact Swift at St. Patrick's. The current Dean responded, "Dr. Swift departed here on 19th October, 1745. He left no forwarding address. Since that date, as far as I know, he has not communicated with friend or foe. Where he is at present, God only knows."


* This silliness reaches Olympian heights when Damrosch suggests that Swift saying (not a direct quote, but more or less) "If heaven is the reward for virtue, then my mother will certainly be there" means *he didn't believe that the virtuous go to heaven.* At another point, he suggests that the entirely conventional use of 'Jove' to refer to God indicates doubts about Christianity. ( )

A very interesting look at Swift's life in the context of his times, which also conveys the extent of his involvement in politics and the breathtaking volume of his writing. When I told a friend of Irish origin I was reading a life of Swift, he immediately quoted Swift's recommendation on how to resist mercantilism: Burn everything English except their coal! A personal encounter with the position Swift occupies in Ireland, whereas here we think of him mostly as the author of "Gulliver's Travels". ( )