Mention Books Conducive To Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts
| Original Title: | Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts |
| ISBN: | 0393061167 (ISBN13: 9780393061161) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Prime Minister's |
| Literary Awards: | Nominee for Nonfiction (2008) |
Clive James
Hardcover | Pages: 912 pages Rating: 4.11 | 1453 Users | 214 Reviews
Ilustration In Pursuance Of Books Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts
This book should come with a warning label on it. If you are anything like me, reading it will make your to-read shelf grow tremendously.Clive James is a well-known Australian writer, critic, broadcaster, and poet; he has often been described (in the US) as a public intelectual. Cultural Amnesia spotlights his comprehensive and deep knowledge is of Western culture, with a special focus on 20th-century Europe. The volume is comprised of 106 biographical profiles of a wide range of writers, musicians, artists, actors whom James deems important to know to understand 20th-century cultural, intellectual, and political life. (Note that some figures lived in earlier centuries, but James always makes their relevance to the 20th century clear.) These brief essays are organized alphabetically, and structured around one or more quotations from the individual being featured, which James uses as a jumping off point for a series of ruminations. While he stays focused on the life of the individual being profiled in some cases, in others his thoughts take him to other cultural and political figures. Following his connections and seeing how his mind works is part of the fun of reading this collection.
Anyone who fears that Cultural Amnesia is a staid, boring encyclopedic volume need worry no longer. James clearly loves learning and sharing his knowledge. He often talks about his experiences teaching himself to read a host of languages, including Spanish, German, and Russian by having a dictionary in one hand and one of the classics he discusses in his essays in the other. He clearly wants us all to join him in what he says is the best way to learn a new language.
In addition, these essays are developed along some common themes, particularly James's championing of humanism and liberal democracy. He writes movingly about writers' responsibilities to fight totalitarianism, as he draws on positive and negative examples from World War II in particular, with special attention to Germany, Austria, and France. As I was reading, I felt I was deepening my understanding and appreciation of Western culture, sometimes by taking a new look at a well-known figure, and other times by learning about a previously unknown person whose work I am know seeking out. (Top on my list is Egon Friedell, whose 3-volume A Cultural History of the Modern Age has been reissued and is high on my April list of books to order).
I read through the essays in Cultural Amnesia in order, which led to some interesting juxtapositions. I moved from Louis Armstrong to Raymond Aron, from Albert Camus to Dick Cavett, from Coco Chanel to Charlie Chaplin. In the M's, I spent some time with Heinrich Mann and Thomas Mann, after which I segued to Mao Zedong. I think it is fitting, given James's central themes, that his final sketch before his conclusion is one of Stefan Zweig, whose memoir The World of Yesterday I just reviewed. Zweig was one of the foremost proponents of the liberal humanism, the internationalism, the commitment to freedom through culture, that James strongly advocates. In his concluding essay, James writes stirringly of the reasons why 21st-century readers should look to the past to understand a way forward to protecting liberal democracy from the forces of hatred, intolerance, and totalitarianism in the future:
"The only answer comes from faith: faith that the rule of decency – which at last, and against all the odds, looks as if it might prevail – began in humanism, and can’t long continue without it. How will we know if our earthly paradise is coming to pieces, if we don’t know how it was put together? It was the human mind that got us this far, by considering what had happened in history; by considering the good that had been done, and resolving to do likewise; and by considering the evil, and resolving to avoid its repetition. Much of the evil, alas, was in the mind itself. The mind took account of that too. The mind is the one collectivity that the free individual can thrive in: which is lucky, because live in it he must. Even within ourselves, there are many voices. Hegel, when he said that we can learn little from history, forgot about Hegel, author of the best thing about history that has ever yet been said. He said that history is the story of liberty becoming conscious of itself."
Clive James
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A poorly formatted but serviceable web page includes the table of contents for Cultural Amnesia, in case any of you would like to review the vast array of people profiled by James: http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip... Amazon's "look inside" feature provides another view of the Table of Contents: http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Amnesi...
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James is currently diagnosed with leukemia and emphysema. A number of articles published in Australian papers earlier in March 2013 featured interviews with his daughters and some examples of his recent poetry.
A February 2013 interview with James was published in The New Republic, and provides insight about James' approach to educating himself: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/11...
Point Appertaining To Books Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts
| Title | : | Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts |
| Author | : | Clive James |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 912 pages |
| Published | : | March 17th 2007 by W. W. Norton Company (first published March 1st 2007) |
| Categories | : | Nonfiction. Writing. Essays. History. Biography. Philosophy. Art. Cultural |
Rating Appertaining To Books Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts
Ratings: 4.11 From 1453 Users | 214 ReviewsRate Appertaining To Books Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts
Clive James massive tome Cultural Amnesia was a great disappointment to me. The format is straightforward enough: take those authors, politicians, arts and entertainment figures that have meant the most to James (good or bad), put them in alphabetical order, provide a biographical sketch, then a quote (or two), and then riff intellectually on that quote. This is a fine way to do an intellectual memoir. But this book is a genial, sprawling mess. Here's why: ***Staying on topic, bragging: JamesPlenty enough comments about this one--and after reading through it with a couple of reading friends, I feel like I've said all I want to say about it already. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the cultural history of the 20th Century, James' point in all these essays is to raise ideas that, if we are not careful, could be forgotten as Liberal Democracy moves forward into the 21st Century. Some of the figures that James focuses on will be unfamiliar to the common reader (close to half
Cultural Amnesia is one of the best works of non-fiction Ive read ever. It is thoroughly enjoyable (funny, thoughtful, incisive, generous in many senses of the word), even when it is pondering the recent centurys most awful evils. It is an illuminating read on topics familiar and unknown.James wrote Cultural Amnesia as 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
I was wrong in my initial assessment of this book, I am reading it straight through and there is certainly a linear thread winding through the essays. I'm in the M's and it is phenomenal. The essay on Egon Friedell keeps orbiting my thoughts throughout the day. Really, everybody, go find a copy of this book and read it. I didn't think people wrote like James anymore.
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 of
maybe 2 1/2Even when I was rather enjoying a few pages of one of these essays, a feeling kept lurking in the background that James expected me to be taking notes - both so I wouldnt forget the pearls of wisdom he was scattering, and so I wouldnt forget who gifted them to me.Why I didnt like the book at all.First let me admit that I only read about 25% of the book, plus the Introduction. James talks down to his reader. How does he do this? The most obvious sign is when he over and over says
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