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Liked It “This is a brilliant book by one of the great cultural critics today. Every sentence drips with wisdom and wit. More than that you learn so much from the pithy notes he makes on a cosmopilitan range of artistic, cultural and politial movers and shakers in the 20th Century -- some famous and others...” see full review » see other reviews » |
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“This is a brilliant book by one of the great cultural critics today. Every sentence drips with wisdom and wit. More than that you learn so much from the pithy notes he makes on a cosmopilitan range of artistic, cultural and politial movers and shakers in the 20th Century -- some famous and others who deserve recognition but seem long forgotten. What's really wonderful about this book is how often you revisit it and just read one entry on a whim. The pen portraits of James' heroes and villains are intuitively insightful. You can see the man has read and his humanity shines through the aphoristic wisdom he lets sink into your brain long after you put the book down. ”
Slow Motion Samurai wrote this review Saturday, September 5 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“I felt a little intimidated when I came to read this, but to my relief I did know at least 25% of the people or events mentioned here. I learnt about many more, but found the wanderings away on a tangent hard to follow sometimes. I felt it deserved more attention than I could give it (it's not a book you can just dip into when you have time). It's one I will be reading again in the future.”
Sarah P wrote this review Monday, May 25 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
1 of 1 members found this review helpful“Also from the Guardian:
Mark F wrote this review Sunday, November 30 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
For non-fiction, there was one stupendous starburst of wild brilliance: Clive James's Cultural Amnesia (Picador). It crackles with epigrammatic mischief and reminded me of Charles Dantzig's great Dictionnaire égoïste de la littérature française, a book that features a devastating skewering of Sartre and a spirited defence of the adjective, plus essays on ignorance, clichés, therapy (against it), digressions (for) and lettres. Will someone please get this fabulous box of tricks translated?
Simon Schama
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/nov/29/best-books-year-2008-review2”
“An amazing book - using an A to Z format to organize essays about the people who have influenced his thoughts - beautifully written and highly informative.”
smith1 wrote this review Monday, October 22 2007. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No1 of 1 members found this review helpful“Simply an incredible book by a master essayist and critic. James writes about both the good and bad of writers, entertainers, philosophers and others from the twentieth century that he feels have impacted that century or at the very least, himself. In describing his annotations he has made over the years about these people who impacted him, he calls them "a linear cluster of nodal points, working the way of the mind - or at any rate my mind, such as it is - works as it moves through time: a trail of clarities variously illuminating a dark sea of unrelenting turbulence, like the phosphorescent wake of a phantom ship."
Zorka wrote this review Thursday, September 6 2007. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Certainly an important work on your shelf.”
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