Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts
by Clive James
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 271)
Read in October, 2007
Cultural Amnesia is one of the best works of non-fiction I’ve read ever. It is thoroughly enjoyable (funny, thoughtful, incisive, generous in many senses of the word), even when it is pondering the recent century’s most awful evils. It is an illuminating read on topics familiar and unknown. Cultural Amnesia is a defense of liberal democracy, humanism, and art and culture that supports freedom, tolerance, and understanding. Organized as an alphabetized series of thematic essays, each of which...more
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Read in January, 2008
This is a superb book.
Now, I don’t mean to be so Bayard, as I have only read about 10% of the essays, but due to the collection’s nature and my absolute infatuation with the work, I feel more than comfortable addressing it now.
I can’t help it. It’s that good.
“Necessary Memories from History and the Arts,” Cultural Amnesia contains 107 essays on figures ranging from Louis Armstrong to Albert Camus, Dick Cavett to Charles Chaplin, Jean-Paul Sartre to Margaret Thatcher, Marcel Pr...more
Now, I don’t mean to be so Bayard, as I have only read about 10% of the essays, but due to the collection’s nature and my absolute infatuation with the work, I feel more than comfortable addressing it now.
I can’t help it. It’s that good.
“Necessary Memories from History and the Arts,” Cultural Amnesia contains 107 essays on figures ranging from Louis Armstrong to Albert Camus, Dick Cavett to Charles Chaplin, Jean-Paul Sartre to Margaret Thatcher, Marcel Pr...more
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Clive James' essays on selected quotations from the 20th Century.
I'd written my initial reaction to this book last year - and having finally finished it a few months ago I can say this book is good for you.
Yes, it is scatterbrained and yes, it is difficult to follow - James has not written a narrative, but a collection of essays that riff on quotations he has collected over the years.
A...more
I'd written my initial reaction to this book last year - and having finally finished it a few months ago I can say this book is good for you.
Yes, it is scatterbrained and yes, it is difficult to follow - James has not written a narrative, but a collection of essays that riff on quotations he has collected over the years.
A...more
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recommended to Biblioasis by:
Charles Foran
“Much beauty,” Clive James writes in Cultural Amnesia, “begins as a consolation for what can’t be mended.” This perfectly captures the animating spirit of this splendid, splendid collection of essays and biographical sketches, the end result of more than 40 years of reading and ruminating. Ranging from Anna Akmatova through Egon Friedell (one of the many tragic heroes of this volume), and ending with Stefan Zweig, it offers 106 portraits and many more possibilities. Though dark and ...more
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Read in January, 2007
recommends it for:
fellow tossers
Although CJ managed to fairly trash some of my favourite theorists (particularly Walter Benjamin whom I adore) I admire his ambition here, I suppose. James, for those unfamiliar (and this includes many Americans, he has never been well read in the US) is, as he anoints himself, a "premature post-modernist". That is to say: he has never been afraid, as a popular writer, to meld the coarse with the classical. And, truly, even though this is commonplace these days, he was one of the fi...more
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Read in July, 2007
This is the sort of omnivorous omnibus that you'd expect to be flatulent and full of itself but (so far) it's fairly fabulous. It's series of essays, each misleadingly titled after a miscellany of famous and obscure personages with no discernable relation to each other — who turn out to be excuses for him to write about whichever obsession springs to mind. I started by picking and choosing; then flipped back to beginning and started reading straight through. It's a romp, entertaining and full ...more
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Read in August, 2007
A huge number of essays regarding personages from the literary and philosophic circles (mostly twentieth century, a few non-humanities related) - some biographic, some intensely focused, and some that only use the person in question as a jumping off point for a larger discussion on a topic. A very large majority of the minds profiled are from the early-to-mid-twentieth century and affected by World War II in some way. James really drives home the point that so many people and ideas were lost i...more
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I've only just started reading, and though I've given it 4 stars, I think I'll end up giving it 5. I'm a lazy reader and often read books which are just fodder, so I'm startled when I come across really excellent writing. And James can put words together.
The book ambles somewhat, but it's as he says - imagine a cafe full of interesting people having conversations about all sorts of stuff.
There's a certain snob opposition to Clive James, as though he thinks he's just so damned clever. He ...more
The book ambles somewhat, but it's as he says - imagine a cafe full of interesting people having conversations about all sorts of stuff.
There's a certain snob opposition to Clive James, as though he thinks he's just so damned clever. He ...more
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Read in June, 2008
recommends it for:
those unversed in 20th century europe
While some have criticized this book as disorganized, I say that James generally puts forth a persuasive case for the importance of literature and literary criticism. He brings a number of figures out of the study and into the realm of politics, and the results are not always heartening. I feel better though, for knowing some of the missteps of people like Sartre. Of course, this sort of book tells a very incomplete story. But that has just made me want to read more. If you can tolerate Jam...more
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Read in January, 2007
Mr. James starts off by introducing us through essays; to some people he feels are relevant to history and culture. But several times James essays seem to contradict his point about relevancy. In a few essays he captures the reader’s imagination and then allows his essay to lead us astray with longwinded rambles about other people, who seem even more relevant than the essays original focal point. I really like James and his use of English, his work always excites the mind! But when his essays ...more
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Read in July, 2007
interesting to compare this with John Gray's Straw Dogs. In his introduction James seems to have a similar position to Gray, in many ways: they are both preoccupied with how the twentieth century has richly demonstrated that there is nothing inevitable about progress, and that civilization can easily turn into large scale horror. But while Gray wants to show that liberal humanism is a delusion, James is a committed humanist. He wants to argue (I think) that humanist values are meaningful as long...more
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The fun in any anthology is picturing all the contributors in the same room together. The game is especially fun with this doorstop, Clive James' latest. These subjects here-- heros, villains, and artists-- are an odd mix, oddly juxtaposed (by alphabetical coincidence, Camus and Dick Cavett abut each other in the table-of-contents) but deftly sketched, with the 20th century's great calamities as a backdrop. Why pay for an education when James provides one here, with jokes, for a price in the low...more
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Read in November, 2007
A mostly fascinating collection of biographies, painting a portrait of intellectual life in the 20th century interupted by WW2 and the Holocaust. Mostly good because of one strange digression about Sophie Scholl, about how Natalie Portman should play her in a movie about her life, James get a little creepy-old-man here and goes on and on about how she brings "gravity" to anything she's in, conveniently forgetting that SHE CAN'T FUCKING ACT. blegh. this also showing James as a bit of a ...more
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Read in March, 2008
Because I have so little time to sit and read (I do most of my reading with recorded books) I actually didn't finish this book. But it is short bio type expressions of why Clive James believes that the particular people (some very well known some not)had an impact on our culture. So it was easy to read short pieces. I found it very enjoyable and if the library had allowed me to renew, I would have continued to read. His observations were very astute. I.E. I loved his assessment of Norman Mailer.
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Read in December, 2007
I was expecting this to be a collection of biographies of important people but it turned out to be essays ruminating on some idea with a specific person as a jumping off point. I really liked his writing style, you get a great sense of tthe writer's voice, and the essays were interesting, but he included a lot of people I didn't know so there was some context missing and I tended to get bored. It was less biographical, more musing on history, and a lot of musical history (classic and jazz).
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in April, 2008
Clive James may be the most pompous author I've ever read. The book is slightly addictive because of the fascinating authors, musicians and politicians it (sort of) profiles. However more often than not the subject of the essay is a quickly abandoned launching pad for a lazy rant on the bee currently in his bonnet. It's ok to read in doses but I think the subtitle tells us that James had more ambition for the book than a bathroom reader.
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I should probably also shelve this door stopper of a book as 'reference' because it's not really a read-all-the-way-through-at-once book, rather it's a dip-into-and-savor book. I picked up on these cultural essays online at Slate over several months which was a very good way to enjoy this collection. To think of James's astonishing grasp on the 20th century's artists, writers, politicians, what-alls leaves me breathless.
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Read in September, 2007
This is a very big book of essays on artists, writers, thinkers, musicians and their relationship to history/culture and ideas. I particularly like the authors take on academia and the fact that so many intellectual ideas are written in a way that is only accessible or interesting to a few... and that it doesn't need to be that way.
It also gave me a good list of people I didn't know about that I need to read!
It also gave me a good list of people I didn't know about that I need to read!
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I found this an engaging read (and so does my wife who is now reading it). I perceived that his persistent topic is humanism with a tincture of the Holocaust in many of the lives written about, some dead and some escaped from Nazi tyranny. The organization is unusual, i.e. in alphabetical order of the authors.
I learned of the book when watching Bill Moyers Journal.
I learned of the book when watching Bill Moyers Journal.
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Read the introductory material in the bookstore cafe, and see if you're hooked. I'm actually familiar with perhaps two-thirds of James's 100 notable figures, some of them terribly obscure. But it's a timely reminder of so much that we've forgotten culturally that is of absolutely critical importance. Incidentally, quite fascinating.
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book data (includes all editions)
avg rating (all editions): 3.90 (104 ratings) avg rating (this edition): 3.90 (104 ratings) number of reviews: 40popular shelves
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"The inevitable effect of a biographer's hindsight is to belittle the subject's foresight."
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