Unreliable Memoirs

At the start of this memoir of his childhood through to early adulthood, Clive James warns us not to trust him: ‘Most first novels are disguised autobiographies. This autobiography is a disguised novel….So really the whole affair is a figment got up to sound like the truth’. It might sound like unusual honesty from a memoirist, but I suspect it’s more in the way of an ingenious double bluff: James preparing to reveal all in sometimes embarrassing detail while simultaneously creating a convenient face-saving smokescreen. The Cretan who said all Cretans are liars springs to mind. We know the biographical outline is true, James is raised in a suburb of Sydney by his war widow mother, and his detailing of his inner life also has the show more unmistakable ring of authenticity. The book is, I think, emotionally truthful without being slavishly faithful to the facts. Later on he relates how he gained popularity with his schoolmates by telling tall tales - of his ‘close personal acquaintance with Rommel’, for instance. Such comedic exaggeration formed the basis of much of what James did, this autobiography being a notable example. He continually inflates the facts to render them funny. Like his playground audience, however, the reader is in on the joke, and exaggerating the objective facts of our lives does not necessarily distort the subjective truth of them: it might well amplify it. Although the term autofiction was still in its infancy when the book was published in 1980, that’s undoubtedly what it is.

James goes out of his way to portray himself as an obnoxious little shit. Perhaps he goes too far, the endless litany of his misdemeanours and inadequacies eventually reading like an inverted form of boasting. Clever Clive is typically ahead of the reader, pre-empting this very criticism by observing: ‘I am also well aware that all attempts to put oneself in a bad light are doomed to be frustrated. The ego arranges the bad light to its own satisfaction’. He also acknowledges that candour about one’s faults doesn’t preclude ignorance of them. Towards the end, writing about a relationship, he observes: ‘I rather liked the idea of being thought of as a shit - a common conceit among those who don’t realise just how shitty they really are’. Nonetheless, his regret over his often insensitive, thoughtless and ungrateful behaviour towards his widowed mother is communicated with patent sincerity.

He provides some useful life tips, not least how to fart on cue to maximum effect in the classroom: ‘The whole secret of raising a laugh with a fart in class is to make it sound as if it is punctuating, or commenting upon, what the teacher is saying. Timing, not ripeness, is all’. Unreliable Memoirs scores high on the scatology-ometer. In addition to noxious bodily gases we are treated to generous helpings of poo, mucus and semen, all served up in his characteristically elegantly witty sentences; a combination of the crowd-pleasing and the erudite being another Jamesian hallmark. It’s also sexually candid, possibly more so than such a memoir would be nowadays, with graphic recollections of his early sexual experiences. The numerous idiocies and largely self-inflicted torments of male adolescence are chronicled with self-lacerating acuity, as the teenage Clive frets about the size of his dick and other lamentable physical imperfections. This book isn’t for the squeamish or easily shocked, but then neither are childhood and adolescence.

I first read it when it came out and recently came across a copy in a charity bookshop. It’s still just as funny as I remembered, reason enough to read it as truly funny books are thin on the shelves, but it’s more substantial than that might suggest. Despite the title this is a genuinely confessional memoir full of regret over bad behaviour mixed with unmistakable longing for Housman’s ‘blue remembered hills’ of childhood. It’s a mea culpa and a love letter to ‘the land of lost content’; that land, in this case, being both childhood and Australia. James, writing as a self-exile in rainy England, evokes his homeland so vividly that it is less a setting and more a central character, bringing both it and the past to life in prose which is pure poetry-:

‘Hunting for cicadas in the peppercorns and the willows, you were always in search of the legendary black prince, but invariably he turned out to be a redeye. The ordinary cicada was called a pisser because he squirted mud at you. The most beautiful cicada was the yellow Monday. He was as yellow as a canary and transparent as crystal. When he lifted his wings in the sunlight the membranes were like the deltas of little rivers. The sun shone straight through him. It shone straight through all of us’. show less

To me, this book is an absolute classic. There were parts where I was unable to read any further because of the tears of laughter in my eyes, but that probably prevented the more serious damage that could have resulted from reading on and laughing even more. However a great book needs more than humour, it needs to mean something, and this book addresses profound themes concerning family, love, confidence, life choices, regret and self-acceptance. I have read this book before, but I was astonished to find so much that I hadn't noticed on any previous reading. The author struggles with feelings of regret and frustration about how he acted as a child and young man, but he also tries to forgive himself for those transgressions. This makes show more it a very compelling read and it is well served by Clive James' clear prose and perfect comic timing. show less

In 2015 I wrote a short review of UNRELIABLE MEMOIRS:

Many years ago I remember being given this book for my birthday with the comment "thought you might like this, he's the sort of droll smart-arse commentator that should appeal to you". The presenter of this present knew me well, although I think that they did a massive disservice to Clive James.

The first of a series of books he's subsequently written as memoir there is nobody in these books that James picks on more than himself. He has a wonderful, dry way of commenting on the obvious, of drawing out the reality of the comedy of life.

Everytime I read anything written by Clive James I'm reminded of the beauty of sparsity, of the power of the gaps between the lines. I'm also reminded

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that this is the first of a series of novels and James could be seen to be holding back a little. Really looking forward to reading the next of the series now.

It's one thing to know that a favourite commentator, reviewer and poet is going to die, the announcement of Clive James' illness coming many years ago now, and yet another to get the news that the inevitable has happened. We lost an intelligent, wry, acerbic, deeply thoughtful person from this earth when he died, in what seems inevitable timing for these things - just when you felt we needed him most.

But it was the ultimate reminder I needed that a good re-read was required, so I went back to UNRELIABLE MEMOIRS and I've been moving slowly through the group of memoir novels, interspersed with dips into some of his poetry, all the while returning to listen to his reading of JAPANESE MAPLE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op8Rbtqx_Rg). Such a poignant poem, sad and reflective, all the while tempered with the knowledge that James did, indeed

Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.

What I must do

Is live to see that.That will end the game

For me, though life continues all the same:

And I can't help but think how much he would have reflected on living past the end moment of the tree itself, but I digress.

Re-reading UNRELIABLE MEMOIRS five years on from the beauty of sparsity comments above, what struck me this time was the manner in which James writes audibly. Every scene, every moment of his life is described beautifully, but in a particularly aural manner. From the sound of the click of the lid of the nightsoil man's tin, to those little moments as a kid in the Australian summer, digging a network of tunnels in the backyard, everything about this man's writing is indeed dry, sparse, littered with moments where reflection is invited, peppered with observations that make you cry with laughter. There are quotes aplenty from these books available to those that search. My advice would be to read the books. Read every single one of his books. Re-read them.

Rilke used to say that no poet would mind going to gaol, since he would at least have time to explore the treasure house of his memory. In many respects Rilke was a prick.

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Dear Clive James,

Thank you for writing this book which achieves exactly what it promises upon the cover. There, in bold letters my paperback version of this work promises that I will 'risk severe internal injuries from trying to suppress (your) laughter'. I did, on several occasions, laugh uncontrollably.

Whilst I am writing, may I request that you take on the task of producing my biography in the same half fact, half fiction style that you used for your reminiscences. I was impressed by the way that this left you entirely free to make up any bits that you wished so to do. Should anyone who was around at the time complain that this was not the way that they remembered the incident, you could simply point to the 'fiction get out show more clause'.

I would also like to congratulate you upon the subtle method utilised to tell the reader what an all out good guy you are. It is a masterpiece of English autobiography: rather than writing, "I am a really sensitive chap who is supremely intelligent", you tell us the exact opposite. This, in itself, makes it difficult for the reader to do other than mentally argue your case but, just to be sure, you berate yourself in a manner that makes clear that you now see the errors of your previous manner and have corrected every one of them. Add a sprinkling of words that sent me scurrying to the dictionary and a few literary allusions that required the perusal of the Oxford Guide to Literature, and your status as one of the very best wits of the English language is assured.
Yours Sincerely,

Ken Petersen.

P.S. If this encomium has left you feeling a little big headed, then I am about to bring you back down to earth: you didn't need to work so hard - I already knew that you were brilliant. show less

Acerbic nostalgia? Is there such a thing? If so I think this "autobiography disguised as a novel" fits the description. Yes as the cover says it's laugh out loud funny but under the laughter is the poignant story of a boy who lost his father to WWII growing up insecure in post war Sydney. Read in one sitting. Beautiful, erudite, coarse, elegant a mass of contradictions which I still have to assimilate...

I remembered this book as being much funnier when I first read it 40 years ago. This time round it did make me smile a lot but I could easily have read it on a train or any other form of public transport.

Forty years on the kid from Kogarah recounts growing up in Australia before embarking on a new life in England. I loved grandfather and the Heimlich manoeuvre, the dunny can disaster and the billy-cart train.

“Despite the temperature being 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade, there had been the full panoply of ragingly hot food, topped off with a volcanic plum pudding smothered in scalding custard.”

“Suddenly there was the noise of … well, it was mainly the noise of a dunny man running full tilt into a bicycle. The uproar was made show more especially ominous by the additional noise – tiny but significant in context – of a clipped lid springing off”.

“First gradually, then with stunning finality, the monster lashed its enormous tail. The air was full of flying ball-bearings, bits of wood, big kids, little kids, koalas and dummies. Most disastrously of all, it was also full of poppy petals. Not a bloom escaped the scythe.”

However, the incessant willy wanging became rather trying, Milo the Magnificent and his garage antics were far from magnificent and the plethora of highbrow literary references started to get me down.

I could imagine Clive James narrating his self-deprecating and at times poignant Unreliable Memoirs in his distinctive, antipodean twang with a sardonic smile on his face. Gone but never forgotten. show less

When I read, I usually have my voice inside my head. No matter how hard I try, the voice is always the same - there's no escaping it. Or so I thought. As soon as I started reading Clive James' memoirs of his childhood and adolesence growing up in Australia, my voice disappeared, and James's unmistakeable Australian brogue took its place.

'Unreliable Memoirs' is certainly well-written, with its own idiosyncratic style that works best when one reads slowly; however, I would dispute the assertion that this is an hilarious work, since it is only occasionally as funny as James himself. It is often poignant and insightful, always sincere and never too serious, but I only 'laughed out loud' once. Still, that's more often than usual for a book.