Unreliable Memoirs (Unreliable Memoirs, 1)

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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. I found reading this paperback amazingly funny and, in some parts, arguably incomprehensible due to my unfamiliarity with his writing style and some Australian English words. 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. This memoir was first published in paperback in 1981 when Clive was 42 and in 2015 a beautifully written afterword added 4 years before his death in 2019. It is difficult, though, to be the kind of wit who specialises in satirical invective, like the later James, without causing, as well as feeling, pain.

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Lacking the precious gift of taciturnity, I could never achieve the grim face essential to success in paramilitary organisations. I do know Clive has read Evelyn Waugh's A Little Learning, but more learnedly than the way Waugh wrote it. From a small circle of listeners in class, I progressed to a large circle of listeners in the playground.Writing for The New York Times, Joseph Luzzi thought it often failed to capture the more dramatic moments of the Inferno, but that it was more successful where Dante slows down, in the more theological and deliberative cantos of the Purgatorio and Paradiso.

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I read The French Lieutenant’s Woman back in the early 1980s and I have never forgotten the phrase in question- ‘peccurating surintendant’.

In April 2008, James was awarded a Special Award for Writing and Broadcasting by the judges of the Orwell Prize. In this first volume, James explores his childhood adventures in the suburbs of post-war Sydney, his excited arrival in Sixties’ London as a young man and aspiring poet, and his time at Cambridge University where he neglected his studies in favour of poetry, the stage, the music business and the film industry. His entry in The Cambridge Guide to Literature in Englishends, "Morbidly interested in murder, spiritualism and graveyards, and depressive in temperament, he drowned himself near Lowestoft. The motto of Unreliable Memoirsis the better version, inscribed on the temple of the Delphic Oracle.

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From his early learning years James offers an account of himself as naturally gifted but inherently unenthusiastic.

He has a wonderful, dry way of commenting on the obvious, of drawing out the reality of the comedy of life. John Gross included James's essay "A Blizzard of Tiny Kisses" in the Oxford Book of Essays (1992, 1999). While critical of communism for its tendency towards totalitarianism, he identified with the left for much of his life. Given encouragement from others who said they had laughed out loud reading it, I persisted, sort of, which means that I skipped and sampled enough to a) learn more than I needed to know about Clive’s childhood and adolescence and b) could contribute to the discussion.

Unreliable Memoirs Series by Clive James - Goodreads Unreliable Memoirs Series by Clive James - Goodreads

His book is like other memoirs of modern times in assuming and acknowledging that while fiction may be treated as a form of autobiography, autobiography may be practised as a form of fiction. I discover in the new revised edition of Ernest Mossner’s life of David Hume that the young philosopher was said to have been in a drawing-room when a dreadful smell broke out, and was blamed indignantly on the dog. The Jamesian art of excretion is addressed to a readership which is bound to have something of its own to bring to the subject, while perhaps needing a bit of instruction.In 1995 he set up Watchmaker Productions to produce The Clive James Show for ITV, and a subsequent series launched the British career of singer and comedian Margarita Pracatan. I was one of those who suggested that our book club read this, in our elaborate democratic process of choosing books from the library group reading list, but once I started in I couldn’t stand it. James grew up in outer suburban Sydney, where he seems to have perpetrated a series of atrocities against neighbours and his long suffering mother. John Carey chose Unreliable Memoirs as one of the 50 most enjoyable books of the 20th century in his book Pure Pleasure (2000). All the funny stuff happens in childhood - and to give him credit, the whole thing was colourful and well-written enough to push me through to the end, although I admit to skimming the last few chapters.