Clive James' Reliable Essays: The Best Of Clive James
by Clive James
108 Members (4.44)
On This Page
Description
Including Clive James's most memorable pieces - his 'Postcard from Rome', his observations on Margaret Thatcher, his insights into Heaney, Larkin and Orwell - this book also contains brilliantly funny examinations of characters like Barry Humphries, as well as showcasing James's more thoughtful, analytical side. From Germaine Greer to Marilyn Monroe, from the nature of celebrity to German culpability for the Holocaust, Reliable Essays is an unmissable collection from one of the best writers show more of our time. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
Members
- Recently Added By
Published Reviews
ThingScore 100
James's enthusiasm for great writing made him want to be a great writer, which, at his best, he just about is. Academics deploy their technocratic jargon against literature as a stern, roundheaded reproach to it. James's own lucid, witty, metaphorically vivid style is his grateful yet keenly competitive tribute to all those better makers whose work he analyses here - Orwell, Chandler, Eugenio show more Montale, Edmund Wilson or Barry Humphries who 'writes the most nutritiously rococo English'...
To compensate for the rowdy vulgarity of his ITV specials, James the populist has developed a precious, pedantic alter ego who is an occasional irritant in these essays... All the same, I finished this book wishing that I knew as much as James does, and that I wrote as well and (not suffering from the colonial cringe that used to be mandatory for Australian arrivistes in this country) I'm immodest enough to admit that I don't often feel that way when reading the work of other critics. show less
To compensate for the rowdy vulgarity of his ITV specials, James the populist has developed a precious, pedantic alter ego who is an occasional irritant in these essays... All the same, I finished this book wishing that I knew as much as James does, and that I wrote as well and (not suffering from the colonial cringe that used to be mandatory for Australian arrivistes in this country) I'm immodest enough to admit that I don't often feel that way when reading the work of other critics. show less
added by SnootyBaronet
Lists
Best of World Literature
431 works; 51 members
Author Information
75+ Works 7,280 Members
Vivian Leopold James was born on Oct. 7, 1939, in Kogarah, a suburb of Sydney, Australia. His father was taken prisoner by the Japanese at the beginning of World War II and died when the American transport plane carrying him back to Australia crashed into Manila Bay.He changed his first name to Clive after Vivian Leigh became famous for starring show more in Gone With the Wind. After graduating from the University of Sydney and working briefly as an assistant editor on The Sydney Morning Herald, Mr. James set sail for London in 1962. The first volume of his autobiography, "Unreliable Memoirs", which was published in 1980 and rose to the top of the best-seller list in Britain, described his childhood in Australia. Its sequel, "Falling Towards England", covered, in often painful detail, his mostly unsuccessful attempts to gain traction in London, where he shared a flat with the future filmmaker Bruce Beresford. Pembroke College, Cambridge, came to the rescue, offering him a place. Mr. James did manage to earn a degree and even embarked on a doctoral dissertation. Eric Idle, the future Monty Python star, welcomed him into Footlights, the student theatrical troupe; he became its president. He pressed his poems on every journal available and parlayed his enthusiasm for Hollywood. A scrambling career in literary journalism followed, recounted in "North Face of Soho". His essays were first collected in "The Metropolitan Critic" (1974). Later collections included "At the Pillars of Hercules" (1977) and "From the Land of Shadows" (1982). His television criticism, issued in book form in "Visions Before Midnight" (1977), "The Crystal Bucket" (1981) and "Glued to the Box" (1983), was gathered in a single volume, "On Television," in 1991. Clive Leopold James passed away on Sunday 12/01/2019 in Cambridge, England at the age of 80. show less
Common Knowledge
- Epigraph
- To
MARGARET OLLEY and JEFFREY SMART
Sidere mens eadem mutato - Dedication
- ‘Life is a cemetery of retrospective lucidities’
Jean-François Revel, La Connaissance Inutile - First words
- Author’s Note
Every author would like to think that the aggregate of his incidental prose, from the merest book review to that smart written reply to the tax inspector, forms a picture of his complex, subtle, infinit... (show all)ely ramified mentality: hence the tendency to put everything in, and the pain at seeing anything taken out.
Introduction
‘I suppose,’ said Clive, ‘you wouldn’t consider writing an introduction to my selected essays?’
Who wrote this? - Quotations
- Mailer is ready to detect all manner of bad vibes in the 50s, but unaccountably fails to include in his read-out of portents the one omen pertinent to his immediate subject. The way that Hollywood divested itself of intellige... (show all)nce in that decade frightened the civilized world. And far into the 60s this potato-blight of the intellect went on.
There is a fine line between being asked to say something differently and being required to say something different, but it is a clear one.
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 108
- Popularity
- 298,932
- Rating
- (4.44)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 5
- ASINs
- 2
