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Great collection of essays

Customer Rating:

A superb collection of essays on some of the most interesting figures of the twentieth century. Many of them are obscure and I found the book useful for expanding my reading in new and unexpected directions. Since buying Cultural Amnesia I have often found myself looking up further books by the people mentioned. This is a great book to have lying around for when you have ten minutes to spare and want something quick but mind expanding to read.

Find out what you didn't know you should know!

Customer Rating:

How do you define your humanity, your worth and the meaning of the good life? Did the last book you read, the last poem heard, the choir on Classic FM, the last serious piece of reportage in the newspaper make you think, widen the space for thought, help you engage more as a citizen? Did you make a note of the words that hit a spot? Remember to look that book up when next in the library, wonder what that old book of essays would be like you came across in the second hand bookshop. Perhaps as you get older do you see a pattern in what moves you in music, what is good writing and which political ideas increases the possibility of greater freedom of expression and those that close the creative spaces down? One way to describe this book is to see it as Clive James 40 years exploration to make sense himself, his work and the world around him through works of the well-known, forgotten, cut-short or bogus mainly western intelligentsia. These are over but not confined the past 150 years. He also throws in 20th century film stars, fashion designers, TV broadcasters, jazz musicians and reporters. The format is over 100 individual pen-sketches grouped in alphabetical order of individuals that have aroused his interest with as sentence, comment, or thought and been inked over the years in his journal. From these seeds grows an essay that critically reveals more about the idea or the character or the context but done in his usually witty light foxtrot prose. Knowing that nothing worse then a judgement on writing style not seem here are three extracts. Pierre Drieu La Rochelle (p.177) `And above all, I am not interested enough in politics to let them encumber my last days' On the face of it, Drieu's valedictory testament was absurd. It was 1944, after the liberation of Paris; he had never made any secret of collaborating with the ***; his deeds were done and his time had run out. And his entire personal disaster had been because of his interest in politics. Already resolved to suicide, he was attributing a deficiency to himself in the very area where he had been most obsessed. Chares De Gaulle (p.258) After a life of misery, Anne de Gaulle, who had a severe case of Down's syndrome, died choking in her father's arms. She was 20 years old. At her funeral, de Gaulle is reputed to have said, "Now she is like the others". The awful beauty of that remark lies in how it hints at what he had so often felt...For us, that overhear the last gasp of a long agony, there is a additional poignancy of recognising that the Man of Destiny lived every day with an heavenly dispensation he could not control. But to be faced from day to day with a quirk of fate not amenable to human will is sometimes the point of sanity for a man who lives by imposing his personality-the point of salvation, the redeeming weakness. Miguel De Unamuno (p771) The eternal, not the modern, is what I love: the modern will be antiquated and grotesque in ten years, when the fashion passes. The quoted passage makes more sense when we trace what he meant by eternismo, the eternal. He didn't mean an appeal to transcendental values: he meant attention to the profane reality that is always there. On the same page...he wrote the universal is in the guts of the local and circumscribe, and that the eternal is the guts of the temporal and evanescent ... (memo to myself and younger readers: all guesses about tone in a foreign language should be checked with someone who speaks it for a living). If you have gone... "er never heard of them" then that's a major theme of this book which examines the fate of those intellectuals and their works in the fall out of the Red and Fascist terrors of the 20th centuries as well as the South American dictatorships. Voices lost as they are swept away to death camps, or corrupted to stay on the right side of the prevailing political winds. Books left as floating corpses as the Saloon life of St Peters, Vienna and Paris sank and burned in the 20's and 30's:a tradition with roots in a different form of Jewish prejudice. Another theme is the cant and empty postures by usually left wing intellectuals during the Cold War that would have resulted in a long death in the countries they claim to admire. I have sympathy with this augment having seen at first hand the middle class student Trotskyites who saw the working class as the ideal except when meeting the wider trade unions membership and ordinary people. Who naturally were seduced by the media to not grasp the wisdom of their leaders in waiting. I was one of those who joined the Communists in the 80's but had no illusions of what they were doing in Russia and China. I saw the dedication and faith that the little band of activists in wanting to change things by active mobilisation rather then electoral engagement alone. Of course we would have all been the first to vanish in any of the systems that we were assuming the UK to be. But read the book and you don't see the poverty and lack of opportunity and social justice that creates the Left. I still see politics of changing the agenda more important then the politics of elections and would tackle the illusion of liberal democracy not with the charge that they are not democratic but that they see democracy stopping at the gates of the factory or school. Other notions such as Social Capital and Environmental Justice movements show currents shaking off traditional notions of Electoral Socialism. These are minor quibbles for what is timely reminder what we are losing in this country with an Education system that fetishes churning out workers and not enabling citizens. Clive James reads many of the books he discusses in their original language, has a lively interest in how films, TV, poetry are creating our cultural life. He can judge and put into context what the writer or performer is offering. Can you? Would you try? See what you lose if you don't try. In a conversation on Picasso's Guernica Matthews asked his students to...look at their inner response...what sound do you hear from the painting?... the room exploded in howls of pain and rage. The door flew open and two students from the hallway stuck their heads in, their expressions resembling the faces in the painting itself. Said one participant, `Suddenly I saw that these art forms were making a claim on me. They were saying, "Wake up! Live your real life." Stanfield, R.B. (2000) The Art of Focused Conversation p.2

Yes, look at just how clever Clive James is!!

Customer Rating:

This book is not so much of a polemic, but the presentation of various points of view with which the reader can debate with himself / herself and others (including the author himself). It is a book crying out for contention and argument. As a `dipping' book therefore it is one of the most intellectually worthy publications of the past few years, and I would recommend that 'dipping' in and out of its contents is the most rewarding way to approach it. I personally do have my reservations about several points that James makes, for example I think his opinions on music (especially Jazz) are somewhat myopic, and he certainly has a big problem with both Sartre and Brecht, but the joy to be had here is to question your own perceptions of these subjects again in the light of your newly formed experiences. James's observations remind me of George Orwell's essays in the sense that often James will push the reader to places where he does not want to go, and in so doing forces a re-evaluation of long-held and cherished opinions. This is very healthy. Also like Orwell, the points of view are written to set the blood pumping and hone the critical parts of one's brain to such an extent that it is almost irrelevant if you agree with what is being said or not. If you re-read a chapter again a few months down the line, you may find that your opinions have changed again, just like when reading an Orwell essay. The promotion of critical thought is the main object of this book, and Mr. James achieves it superbly with his style. More problematical is that there are a few `typos' to be found in this edition which I hope will be corrected either in a later edition, Mr. James's website, or in the second volume that Mr. James is contemplating. Another problem with the book is the stated aim that the book has been written to instruct the young. I feel that this objective may prove to be optimistic on Mr. James' part, not because I think that the young are not up to the challenges that a study of humanism entails, but the many faceted approach James adopts in his writing style requires the bringing to bear of accumulated life experiences which the younger reader may not have had the time to accumulate. I hope I'm wrong. As for the `pissing contest' innuendo from a previous reviewer, all I can say to that is such a remark is proof (if proof were ever required) that the British trait of inverted snobbery is alive and well. It is more desirable alternative to have the guy dribble on about Margarita Pracatan for the rest of his career? Why is it that any display of erudition from a writer or commentator becomes something to be cynically condemned by a small but vocal part of society, as if sharing an intelligent mind is akin to the wanton display of some kind of hideous deformity. Is accumulated knowledge exclusively to be kept to one's self, or to be shared with others? If that reviewer was to reach beyond his/her own snap judgement and actually pay attention what is actually being said, then he or she may learn something (shock, horror!), or (gasp!) may actually want to find out more. Most of the `obscure references' referred to in the book are either available from this site or at your friendly neighbourhood second-hand bookseller. So most are not obscure at all, really. If you are at all interested in the humanities, then this is a book to be thoroughly recommended. There is nothing to be afraid of within these pages, and if used as intended (supplemented with some of the works referred to) this book will be a passport (or postcard!) to the start of a wonderful voyage of self-discovery for any reader. It has wit, charm, and variety in spades, and is an erudite affirmation of the human condition just when it is most needed. Congratulations to Mr. James.

Brilliant

Customer Rating:

If you are like me in any way and show an interest in literature, philosphy, science, history, politics, art and music - but are often put off by the often inpenetrable, pretentious writing on them - then this book is for you. If on the other hand you have no problem with inpenetrable, pretentious cultural studies, then this is for you to re-aqaint yourself with the English language! Clive James writes wonderful, simple, clear prose. And it is full of insights, page and page. A man who seems to know so much could be forgiven for being arrogant - but there is not a hint of it in this book. This is a book written with real understanding of his subjects, you will find no ill-informed polemics here. This is not to say that he writes about some people he does not like - Sarte amongst others - but what he does do is avoid the obvious criticims. The book is broken up into chapter of about 4-12 pages, each using a famous C20th (sometimes C19th) figure as his starting point, before taking you off on an interesting angle. It's perfect for dipping in an out of, and given the size of the book, fantastic value for money. Given the number of insights he makes, it's just as well it is something you dip in an out of - I have frequently found myself putting the book down after reading a chapter, intent on letting what I have read run round my head for a while. I'll probably be dipping in and out of it for a year to come. I haven't come across a book quite like this before. I'd go as far as to say it's the best buy I have ever made on Amazon.

Just how clever is Clive James!!

Customer Rating:

The great thing about Clive James is that as you read his essays you get a really positive feeling that he is sharing not just his opinions but his experiences and influences. He is one of those cultural attrators that will set you off on a complete tangent and open up new vistas in your reading life. I've read North Face of Soho and this book back to back and can't wait to dip into some of the many recommendations offered.