Authors: Clive James
Stardust Memories,
541
Starrett, Vincent, 196
Star-Shaped Key, The,
267
Steichen: The Master Prints, 1895â1914,
573
Stevens, Wallace, 86, 440
Stevenson, Adlai, 412, 413
Stevie: A Biography of Stevie Smith
(Barbera and McBrien), 123â28
Stewart, Douglas, 149, 151, 157
Stewart, Harold, 151
Stieglitz, Alfred, 571, 572, 582
St. Mawr
(Lawrence), 177
Strand, Paul, 572, 593
Stratten, Dorothy, 563, 565
Strictly Ballroom,
524
Struve, Gleb, 296
Study in Scarlet, A
(Doyle), 191, 192, 193
Stürmer, Michael, 489, 494
Such is Life
(Furphy), 156â57
Sudek, 573â74
Sulla Poesia
(Montale), 53â54
Summoned by Bells
(Betjeman), 81
Survival in Auschwitz
(Levi), 260, 263, 283
Sutherland, Donald, 555
Svevo, Italo, 460â62
Swift, Jonathan, 309
Sword of Honor
(Waugh), 428, 430, 431
Symons, Julian, 191, 193
Szarkowski, John, 570, 585, 587, 589â90
Talbot, William Fox, 568
Tales, Sketches, Speeches, and Essays
(Twain), 305
Tausk, Peter, 582â83
Taylor, A. J. P., 488
Tchaikovsky, Pyotr, 120, 122
Teorema,
534
Thalberg, Irving, 392
Things of This World
(Wilbur), 437, 441
Thin Man, The
(Hammett), 392
This is Orson Welles
(Bogdanovich), 562
This Side of Paradise,
180
Thomas, Dylan, 95â96, 97
Thomas Hardy and British Poetry
(Davie), 71â76
Thomson, Ian, 276â82
Through the Looking Glass
(Auden), 10
Thurber, James, 307
Thwaite, Anthony, 38, 39, 43
Time Exposure
(Beaton), 575
Time in New England
(Strand), 572
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
(le Carré), 227
Tognazzi, Ugo, 544
To Live!,
549
Tolstoy Leo, 215â16, 223
To the Bitter End
(Klemperer), 273
To the Finland Station
(Wilson), 382
Towards Mozambique
(Johnston), 102, 104
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
(Wittgenstein), 512
Trask, Willard R., 329
Tresckow, Henning von, 483
Trilling, Lionel, 375, 378
Triple Thinkers, The
(Wilson), 112
Trouble is My Business
(Chandler), 208
Truce, The
(Levi), 267
Truffaut, François, 557, 562
Truman, Harry S., 412, 485
Tucker, Larry, 555
Turner, L. Roger, 580
Tutti a Casa,
534
Twain, Mark, 187, 231, 305â27
Twelfth Night
(Shakespeare), 126
Twilight in Italy
(Lawrence), 169â72
Tynan, Kathleen, 497â501
Tynan, Kenneth, 497â501
Tyranny of Distance, The
(Blainey), 256
Una Vita Violenta
(Pasolini), 530, 533
Unfinished Woman, An
(Hellman), 387, 388â89
Upstate
(Wilson), 370â74
Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa,
548
Valéry, 29, 450
Valley of Fear, The
(Doyle), 191, 192, 194, 199
Velázquez, 588â89
Verdi, Giuseppe, 463
Vidal, Gore, 421â26
Vile Bodies
(Waugh), 429â30, 433
Violent Life, A
(Pasolini), 530
Visconti, Luchino, 533â34, 548
Visions of China
(Riboud), 595â96
Vivere!,
549
von Stauffenberg, Claus Graf, 483
Vreeland, Diana, 576â77
Wagner, Richard, 486
Waking, The
(Roethke), 92â93, 96
Wallace-Crabbe, Chris, 159
Walter, Bruno, 487
Wandering Islands, The
(Hope), 139, 156
War and Peace
(Tolstoy), 215, 216, 223
Warhol, Andy, 360, 414
Wassermann, Jakob, 492
Waste Land, The
(Eliot), 353
Water's Edge
(Callahan), 573
Waugh, Evelyn, 69, 105, 301, 427â35
Wax, Bill, 580
We
(Zamyatin), 296
Weaver, William, 530
Webb, Francis, 145â46, 161
Welles, Orson, 498â99, 557, 561
Weston, Brett, 592
Weston, Edward, 570, 592
What's Up, Doc?,
562, 565
White, E. B., 390
White, Minor, 582
White, Patrick, 156
Whitehead, Alfred North, 506
Whitehead, Evelyn, 506â7
White Women
(Newton), 578
Whitlam, Gough, 249, 250
Whitman, Walt, 85â86
Whitsun Weddings, The,
39, 42, 43, 55, 57, 59â60, 62, 67â68, 75
Who the Devil Made It
(Bogdanovich), 561, 563
Wilbur, Richard, 88, 436â42, 593
Wilder, Billy, 398
William Klein
(Klein), 596â97
Wilson, Angus, 191, 193, 196â97
Wilson, Edmund, xvi, xvii, 112, 121â22, 305â6, 370â86, 423
Wilson, Woodrow, 420
Window on Russia, A
(Wilson), 112
Wise, Kelly, 574
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 502, 512
Women on Women,
579
Woodward, Bob, 420
Words for the Wind
(Roethke), 93, 96, 99
Working Forest, A
(Murray), 158
Work of Atget, The
(Atget), 589
Wouk, Herman, 422
Wound and the Bow, The
(Wilson), 379
Wright, Judith, 147, 149, 153â57, 159
Wyeth, Jamie, 414
Wylie, Elinor, 441
Yeats, W. B., 15â16, 46, 72â76, 93, 95â96, 355, 380, 438
Yorke, Henry, 429
Yosemite and the Range of Light,
571
You Only Live Twice
(Fleming), 230
Zabriskie Point,
543
Zamyatin, Y. I., 296
Zanuck, Darryl, 400, 401
Zerner, Henri, 588
Zolotow, Maurice, 395
Zweig, Stefan, 493
Clive James was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1939 and educated at Sydney Technical High School and Sydney University, where he was literary editor of the student newspaper
Honi Soit
and also directed the annual Union Revue. After a year spent as assistant editor of the magazine page of the
Sydney Morning Herald
he sailed in late 1961 for England. Three years of a bohemian existence in London were succeeded by his entry into Cambridge University, where he read for a further degree while contributing to all the undergraduate periodicals and rising to the presidency of Footlights.
His prominence in extracurricular activities having attracted the attention of the London literary editors, the byline “Clive James” was soon appearing in the
Listener
, the
New Statesman
, the
Review
and several other periodicals, all of them keen to tap into the erudite verve which had been showing up so unexpectedly in
Varsity
and the
Cambridge Review
. Yet the article that made his name was unsigned. At the invitation of Ian Hamilton, who as well as editing the
Review
was assistant editor of the
Times Literary Supplement
âwhich was still holding at the time to its traditional policy of strict anonymityâthe new man in town was given several pages of the paper for a long, valedictory article about Edmund Wilson. Called “The Metropolitan Critic” in honour of its subject, the piece aroused widespread speculation as to its authorship: Graham Greene was only one of the many subscribers who wrote to the editor asking for their congratulations to be passed on, and it became a point of honour in the literary world to know the masked man's real identity.
Embarrassed to find himself graced with the same title he had given his exemplar, Clive James rapidly established himself as one of the most influential metropolitan critics of his generation, but he continued to act on his belief that a cultural commentator could only benefit from being as involved as possible with his subject, and over as wide a range as opportunity allowed. The Sunday newspaper the
Observer
hired him as a television reviewer in 1972, and for ten years his weekly column was one of the most famous regular features in Fleet Street journalism, setting a style which was later widely copied.
During this period he gradually became a prominent television performer himself, and over the next two decades he wrote and presented countless studio series and specials, as well as pioneering the “Postcard” format of travel programmes, which are still in syndication all over the world. His major series
Fame in the Twentieth Century
was broadcast in Britain by the BBC, in Australia by the ABC and in the United States by the PBS network.
But despite the temptations and distractions of media celebrity, he always maintained his literary activity as a critic, author, poet and lyricist. In 1974, his satirical verse epic
Peregrine Prykke's Pilgrimage
was the talk of literary London, many of whose leading figures were disconcerted by appearing in it, and more disconcerted if they were left out. In the same year,
The Metropolitan Critic
was merely the first of what would eventually be six separate collections of his articles, and in 1979 his first book of autobiography,
Unreliable Memoirs
, recounting his upbringing in Australia, was an enormous publishing success, which has by now extended to more than sixty reprintings. It was followed by two other volumes of autobiography,
Falling Towards England
and
May Week Was in June
.
In addition there have been four novels, several books of poetryâa complete edition is plannedâand a collection of travel writings,
Flying Visits
. His literary journalism became familiar in the United States through
Commentary
, the
New York Review of Books
and
The New Yorker
. His fourth novel,
The Silver Castle
, the first book about Bollywood, was published in the United States in 1996.
Collaborating with the singer and musician Pete Atkin, he wrote the lyrics for six commercially released albums in the early 1970s, and the partnership resumed with two more albums after the turn of the millennium, culminating with a hit appearance for their two-man song-show on the Edinburgh Fringe in 2001 and a tour of Britain in 2002. Extended tours of both Britain and Australia are planned for 2003. After helping to found the successful independent television production company Watchmaker, Clive James retired from mainstream television to become chairman of the Internet enterprise Welcome Stranger, for which he now broadcasts in both video and audio on www.welcomestranger.com, the first webcasting site of its type. He is currently completing a long study of cultural discontinuity in the twentieth century, under the title of
Alone in the Café
, and has begun work on a dance operetta based on his passion for the Argentinian tango. In 1992 he was made a member of the Order of Australia, and in 1999 an honorary Doctor of Letters of Sydney University.
Further praise for
CULTURAL COHESION
“Clive James is in the tradition of Hazlitt, Bagehot, and Edmund Wilson, with a gusto to succeed theirs.”
âJohn Bayley
“[Clive James's] outstanding talent is as a cicerone, guiding the ignorant traveler with patience, knowledge, and wit round some favorite literary edifice and communicating his own admiration of it to the goggling and fascinated visitor.”
â
Times Literary Supplement
“The timelessness, acuity, and humanism of James' criticism is everywhere evident in this scintillating collection.”
âDonna Seaman
, Booklist
Praise for Clive James
“James's prose is . . . comic, inventive, above all, energetic.”
â
New York Times Book Review
“Clive James is a brilliant bunch of guys.”â
The New Yorker
“[James] writes like a prophet and he can satirize folly in high places with a touch as elegant as Oscar Wilde.”
â
Daily Mail
“In a world where knowledge is becoming more fragmentary and specialized every day, Clive James can write about the high, the middle and low alike with astonishing facility and erudition.”
â
Times Literary Supplement
Copyright © 2013, 2003 by Clive James
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First published as a Norton paperback 2013
Previously published under the title
As of This Writing: The Essential Essays, 1968â2002.
“The Dreaming Swimmer,” “Snakecharmers in Texas,” “Primo Levi's Last Will and Testament,” “Mark Twain, Journalist,” “Casanova Comes Home Again,” Hitler's Unwitting Exculpator,” “Bertrand Russell Struggles After Heaven,” “Pier Paolo Pain in the Neck,” “Mondo Fellini,” and “Who Was that Masked Man” were originally published in
The New Yorker
.
“Go Back to the Cold!” reprinted with permission from the
New York Review of Books
. Copyright © 1977 NYREV, Inc.
“Castalia” reprinted with permission from the
New York Review of Books
. Copyright © 1980 NYREV, Inc.
“Waugh's Last Stand” reprinted with permission from the
New York Review of Books
. Copyright © 1980 NYREV, Inc.
“Sherlockology” reprinted with permission from the
New York Review of Books
. Copyright © 1975 NYREV, Inc.
Manufacturing by the Haddon Craftsmen, Inc.
Book design by Jam Design
Production manager: Julia Druskin
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
James, Clive, 1939â
As of this writing: the essential essays, 1968â2002 / by Clive James
p.m.
Includes index
ISBN 0-393-05180-3
ISBN 978-0-393-34711-1 (e-book)
I. Title.
PR9619.3.J27A6 2003
8298'.914âdc21
2003041257
ISBN 978-0-393-34636-7 pbk.
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT