A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson

The Lovecraft Project:

Howard Phillips Lovecraft is the father of cosmic horror – the genre constructed around the notion that we humans are just a tiny, insignificant part of the universe, which holds much bigger, ancient, more powerful beings. We are nothing compared to what lies out there, beyond our reach and understanding.

The plan is to write a few paragraphs – a small review – on each of H.P. Lovecraft’s short stories and novellas, following a chronological order – as they are structured in the Barnes & Noble edition of H.P. Lovecraft The Complete Fiction. The point is to analyze how Lovecraft crafted his tales of horror, the narrative devices he used, the patterns in his writing, the common themes present in his work, and – of course – the blatant racism that permeates some of his stories.

There will be spoilers, of course.

—> You can read or listen to the short story for free here.

A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson

This short story follows an old narrator remembering some things about a strange man he met one day, one Dr. Samuel Johnson. But the rub is that the narrator also claims to be two hundred years old – have been born in August 1690 – and perfectly capable of passing for a young person, deceiving his neighbors.

There’s a sort of metacommentary throughout the whole text, making the reader feel like Lovecraft is poking fun at himself, such as when the narrator writes, “Tho’ many readers have at times observ’d and remark’d a Sort of antique Flow in my Stile of Writing, it hath pleased me to pass amongst the Members of this Generation as a young Man.” It pushes us to wonder whether Lovecraft sees himself in the figure of the narrator: an old man trapped in a young shell, feeling wiser beyond his age, but also out of place in the world.

The narrator claims to love contrary opinions, defending that they make fertile ground for group discussions, so one’s also left wondering if Lovecraft would really have enjoyed being called out for his bigotry and egregious opinions on race. The best part of this poor excuse of a story, after all, comes when the narrator recalls his first meeting with Dr. Johnson: when he made some small talk, telling Johnson about a favorable review written about Johnson’s work, the man’s responses were increasingly arrogant and rude. What makes the moment stand out is the surprising reaction of the narrator, who appears to like Johnson the more the man berates him.

After Dr. Johnson scornfully says, “I do not require to become familiar with a Man’s writing in order to estimate the Superficiality of his Attainments, when he plainly shews it by his Eagerness to mention his own Productions in the first Question he puts to me,” this is the sentence that immediately follows: “Having thus become Friends, we convers’d on many Matters.”

These amusing exchanges, however, soon come to an end, as the narrator decides it’s more important to describe the formation of a book club. The narrative, then, becomes a chore: there’s too much irrelevant information in the text, making the story completely lose its focus. It forgets Dr. Johnson and suddenly becomes about some big names who were members of said club, and are listed in the most insipid form possible: “Other members of the CLUB were Mr. David Garrick, the Actor and early Friend of Dr. Johnson, Messieurs Tho. and Jos. Warton, Dr. Adam Smith, Dr. Percy, Author of the Reliques, Mr. Edw. Gibbo, the Historian,” the list goes on. The interesting dynamic between the narrator and Dr. Johnson is dropped, leaving the short story drifting without aimlessly.

The narrator tries to justify this lack of direction by framing it as the nonsensical rambles of an old man who’s about to take his afternoon tea, confessing this in the last paragraph: “I seem to ramble along without much Logick or Continuity when I endeavour to recall the Past.” But then the story suddenly ends right after this passage, without purpose or meaning. Everything is so absurdly inane that the whole story almost reads like a parody of biographies.

In A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson, Lovecraft tries to mimic the disarrayed memories of an old man reminiscing about the past, crafting a non-linear narrative that is mostly illogical. But the rub is that it’s also incredibly pointless. There’s nothing of substance in the scenes remembered by the narrator, and, in the end, when he promises to tell more if the response to this first recollection of events is favorable, we the readers can only shudder at the thought.

December 24, 2024.