The Plays of William Shakespeare in perspective, we have only to remind ourselves what Johnson brought to it – an assemblage of almost every qualification we should ideally like to have brought to this kind of work with the single exception of patience... Operating in and through these qualities was his own extensive knowledge of human nature and life. No Shakespearean critic or editor has ever approached him in this respect. John Wain, another of Johnson's biographers, claimed, "There is no better statement of the reason why Shakespeare needs to be edited, and what aims an editor can reasonably set himself" than Johnson's "Proposal". The
In the Name of the Father (novel) Name of the Father is a carefully woven, sophisticated first novel that avoids sentimentality and self-indulgence."-Jane Larkin Crain of New York Times Book Review "Growing up poor and Catholic in the Chicago of the 1950s and 1960s, Tonto Schwartz, son of an Irish-Catholic mother and a Jewish veteran, goes through schooling with the nuns, friendship, sexual encounters, drinking, and an abortive sojourn in college. Philosophical musings and wrestling with the name his dying father willed him seem to preclude success in work, school, and personal relationships. Following participation in the 1968 Democratic Convention and an accident, Tonto comes to terms