Jonathan Swift: A Portrait

Rating:
Summary: PARTLY INTERESTING PARTLY TEDIOUS
Review: Glendenning's follows an excellent life of Trollope with a soso effort on another writer who spent a lot of time in both Ireland and England- Jonathan Swift. The book is a curious effort... she calls it a portrait but its more an impressionistic portrait then a realistic biography. She dismisses the standard biographical form with an 8 page summary of Swift's life in chapter one. Her style than is more thematatic than chronological and for the newcomer to Swifts life this is confusing... Stella appears and then disapears for many pages...Glendenning is best discusing Swift's literary life in London from 1710-4 when he hung with Pope and Dr. Arbuthnot. These pages are informative as is the discussion of Swift's relationship with William Temple, his benefactor. Overall, Glendenning's effort is tiresome. She does not appear to have much sustained interest in Swift or to really have enjoyed his books.

Rating:
Summary: An ordinary biography about an extraordinary man
Review: This is an ordinary biography about an extraordinary man. Swift is the author of some of the greatest satires ever written -- funny, vicious, scatological -- full of the strength of conviction and powered by a great command of the English language. A lot of that comes through in this biography by Victoria Glendinning, but a lot of it does not.

One of the main annoyances with this book is that there is too much of the biographer in it. The biographer talks about the process of her research. She peppers the book with many instances of "I think" and "I believe", often without any indication of why she thinks or believes these things. The reader is sometimes left concluding: why does her perception of things have any more credence than anyone else's? How has she proved her case?

Glendinning's analyses of some of Swift's work also often seem a little thin and obvious. Granted, she does not have the space to provide in-depth literary criticism, but the assessments she does provide are so thin sometimes that the reader feels he could do without them altogether. The same applies to her mini-critiques of the former biographers of Swift.

The book is not all bad though. The writing style is good and plain, and she does not engage in too many speculations based on slender biographical data. She does not "make things up", does not try to paint the (imagined) scene just so the reader can have "atmosphere". The book is readable and the most of the basic facts about Swift's life are there.

The book ends on a bad note with the last chapter, however, with Glendinning engaging in some generalizations about Swift's life and about literary art which come off as very judgmental and facile.

Rating:
Summary: Well written personal view
Review: This is no day by day chronicle of a life. Rather, a gerneral view and personal description, 'what Swift is to me'. Once this premise is accepted, the book reads easily, the style is great,the few pictures helpful. The author can be seem to be opinionated or not, but she is always in the background. I had a great time reading this,and I knew very little of Swift beforhand. Now I would like to travel to Dublin, so I guess the book achieved at least something...