Synopses & Reviews
Forty years in the making, a new cultural canon that celebrates truth over hypocrisy, literature over totalitarianism.
Echoing Edward Said's belief that Western humanism is not enough, we need a universal humanism, the renowned critic Clive James presents here his life's work. Containing over one hundred original essays, organized by quotations from A to Z, Cultural Amnesia illuminates, rescues, or occasionally destroys the careers of many of the greatest thinkers, humanists, musicians, artists, and philosophers of the twentieth century. In discussing, among others, Louis Armstrong, Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, James writes, If the humanism that makes civilization civilized is to be preserved into the new century, it will need advocates. These advocates will need a memory, and part of that memory will need to be of an age in which they were not yet alive. Soaring to Montaigne-like heights, Cultural Amnesia is precisely the book to burnish these memories of a Western civilization that James fears is nearly lost. 110 photographs.
Review
"In this towering volume, the fruit of 40 years of passionate involvement, James proves to be a consummate writer of biographical essays....James not only preserves culture and nurtures humanism but also revitalizes the beauty and power of the English language." Booklist (Starred Review)
Review
"It's not the sort of volume most people will want to read straight through, but rather one to dip into here and there a volume to be treasured less for its own sake than for all the other books it will make the reader want to read." Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Review
"[A] finely written, valuable, and comprehensive almanac...highly recommended..." Library Journal
Review
"Exemplary cogitations without a trace of jargon or better-read-than-thou condescension." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"James probably never intended for readers to consume his massive tome front to back; and tucking into the entries on a need-to-know basis can provide rich rewards with no choking risk. Grab a loaf here and there, and feed your mind." Liesl Schillinger, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"Cultural Amnesia...is not to be read at a sitting. It 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." Richard Eder, The Boston Globe
Review
"A lifetime's reading has gone into this doorstop of a book. But I have to ask: What was James thinking?...James tries to capture this Vienna's bickering, zesty, experimental fizz, but it's a high-wire act even the most agile Viennese intellect couldn't pull off." Los Angeles Times
Review
"If you open Cultural Amnesia in the hope of getting a bluffer's guide to the intellectuals, you will be disappointed; but if you read it as an account of how an educator has himself been self-educated, you will be rewarded well enough." Christopher Hitchens, The Atlantic Monthly (read the entire Atlantic Monthly review)
Synopsis
In a compilation of one hundred essays, a critic offers an illuminating study of humanism that examines the work of Louis Armstrong, Sigmund Freud, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Marcel Proust, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and other notable philosophers, musicians, artists, humanists, and writers of the twentieth century.
Synopsis
Containing more than 100 original essays organized by quotations, James illuminates, rescues, or occasionally destroys the careers of many of the greatest thinkers, humanists, musicians, artists, and philosophers of the 20th century. 110 photographs.
Synopsis
Echoing Edward Said's belief that "Western humanism is not enough, we need a universal humanism," the renowned critic Clive James presents here his life's work. Containing over one hundred original essays, organized by quotations from A to Z, Cultural Amnesia illuminates, rescues, or occasionally destroys the careers of many of the greatest thinkers, humanists, musicians, artists, and philosophers of the twentieth century. In discussing, among others, Louis Armstrong, Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, James writes, "If the humanism that makes civilization civilized is to be preserved into the new century, it will need advocates. These advocates will need a memory, and part of that memory will need to be of an age in which they were not yet alive." Soaring to Montaigne-like heights, Cultural Amnesia is precisely the book to burnish these memories of a Western civilization that James fears is nearly lost.
About the Author
Clive James the author of numerous books of criticism, autobiography, and poetry, writes for the New York Times Book Review and the New Yorker. He lives in London.