Cultural Amnesia
by Clive James
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Book Summary Information
Author: Clive JamesEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-09-22
ISBN: 0330418866
Number of pages: 912
Publisher: Picador Paperbacks
Book Reviews of Cultural Amnesia
Book Review: Cultural Amnesia
Summary: 5 Stars
Book Review submitted by: Stephen J. Hage
In the introduction Clive James offers this as prelude to what's coming: "What this book then proposes-what it embodies, I hope-is something difficult enough to be satisfactory for an age in which to be presented with nothing except reassurance is ceasing to be tolerable."
At the end of the introduction James offers this: "What I propose is a sum of appreciations that includes an appreciation of their interdependence: a new humanism.
What these words mean is expect to encounter chateaubriand, bouillabaisse, caviar and lobster instead of pablum. It's not a breezy read. It is, rather, one that grabs you by the throat, wrestles you to the ground and forces you to pay attention. I promise it will not put you to sleep.
James is a world renowned critic. I became aware of him and this book while watching him being interviewed on the PBS television series Bill Moyer's Journal.
The book is big, 851 pages; but it is divided into essays listed in alphabetical order dealing with historical figures and luminaries like Louis Armstrong, Jorge Luis Borges, Albert Camus, Miles Davis, Adolph Hitler, Franz Kafka, and Margaret Thatcher. And keep in mind, this is just a smattering.
As I read it I became increasing impressed with how learned, intelligent and urbane Clive James truly is. He can speak, read and write in several languages and his curiosity along with his deep commitment to humanism infuses every idea he presents in every essay.
The essays are bite sized making this a book that invites you to take it in; in bite sized chunks and almost fooling you into thinking it might be easy-breezy. But as I said, it's not.
While reading it and afterwards, what struck me and haunted me most was this thought: I'll never be able to write as well as this. I am a writer but Clive uses words to reveal he is both magician and sage.
Read this book and feast on the incredibly sumptuous bite sized offerings within; but don't gorge, that might make you sick.
Summary of Cultural Amnesia
'A gigantic book on a gigantic theme' Sunday Times 'Aphoristic and acutely provocative: a crash course in civilization' J. M. Coetzee A lifetime in the making, Cultural Amnesia is the book Clive James has always wanted to write. Organized from A through to Z, and containing over 100 essays, it's the ultimate guide to the twentieth-century, illuminating the careers of many of its greatest thinkers, humanists, musicians, artists and philosophers. From Louis Armstrong to Ludwig Wittgenstein, via Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka and Marcel Proust, it's a book for our times and, indeed, for all time. 'Clive James is one of the most ingeniously stimulating literary critics now writing in English. Cultural Amnesia, with its encyclopedic length and organization and the intense jostle of its ideas, is to be dipped into over weeks and months. If the dipper occasionally brings up exasperation, it brings up astonished delight far more often; and, best of all, exasperated astonished delight' Boston GlobeLiterary Books
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