Clive James and his Unreliable Memoirs – what every adolescent boy should read
CLIVE James is not dead. Twitter lit up with news that the writer and raconteur was dead. He isn’t But he is ill. I read one of his books when younger. James has leukaemia, kidney failure and lung disease. James, the TV reviewer who went on to make great telly, told the BBC:
“I’ve been really ill for two-and-a-half years. I’m getting near the end. I’m a man who is approaching his terminus.”
If you like “Twin miracles of mascara, Barbara Cartland’s eyes look like the corpses of two small crows that had crashed into a chalk cliff“, I urge you to read Unreliable Memoirs, an account of his early years. It’s a cracking read that any adolsescent boy needs to look at. Adult males should look at it again.
Said James:
“I know all about the mechanical aspects of writing and what order to put phrases in and the rhythm of a sentence and how to construct it. I know all that; I could practically do diagrams – but I don’t know where the phrases come from. That ability to make a phrase is probably the essence of what I do, and I don’t know where it comes from, and there’s no guarantee it will be there in the morning.”
I could get maudlin. Read the book…
Posted: 24th, June 2012 | In: Books, Celebrities Comments (2) | TrackBack | Permalink
