In this discipline-spanning magnum opus, British critic-at-large Clive James collects more than 100 brilliantly idiosyncratic biographical essays (with commentary) on major 20th-century writers, artists, and intellectuals whose contributions to Western civilizations are not only essential but, in James's opinion, threatened with extinction. From the expected (Louis Armstrong, G. K. Chesterton, Ludwig Wittgenstein) to the surprising (Dick Cavett, Terry Gilliam), this A-to-Z compendium of witty, aphoristic profiles will edify as it delights -- or infuriates!
It is irresistible to hijack one of his favorite aphorisms (said by Cocteau of Victor Hugo) and conclude: Clive James was a madman who thought he was Clive James. Still, unlike Hugo, 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.
— The New York Times
… James is a master of aphorism and wry humor. Brevity, we have it on good authority, is the soul of wit, and wit is the salt of the aphorism. A page without several epigrams is a rarity; a page without one, nonexistent. They range from tickling irony to stinging insight, often simultaneously … Despite no particular interest in jazz, I was completely won over by the entries on Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Furthermore, James possesses the magic touch for knocking usurpers like Sartre off their pedestals, reaffirming our love for the likes of Camus and making sure we don't overlook a heroine like Sophie Scholl. And how could we resist Tony Curtis sandwiched between the great philosopher Benedetto Croce and the distinguished scholar-critic Ernst Robert Curtius?
— The Washington Post
The humanities are everywhere, but humanism is at a premium. So observes British writer and television personality James (As of This Writing, 2003, etc.) in this collection, mixing amateurish delight and scholarly immersion in books and ideas. It is an uncomfortable fact that a Nazi concentration-camp commander could murder the day away and then, on returning home, weep at a Brahms recording. A mere liking for books, art and music doesn't make a person good; even Adolf Hitler thought of himself as a humanist, though, James writes, "his connection with the civilized traditions was parodic at best and neurotic always." James adds elsewhere that the connection was more genuine than Stalin's and Mao's, if bested by Hitler's comrade Goebbels, who kept a massive library and even read the books in it. Most of James's subjects in this sprawling, sometimes impressionistic gathering of appreciations are the real deal, though. One is the largely forgotten Viennese cabaret performer Egon Friedell, who wrote a strange and centrifugal book and then committed suicide when German troops marched into Austria. Other of James's quite diverse heroes include Albert Camus, Stefan Zweig, Ernst Robert Curtius, G.K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh and Dick Cavett, figures who run the range of European humanism, British traditionalism and, well, Nebraskan autodidacticism. James is keen on exploring influences; his essay on Jorge Luis Borges, for instance, draws in the Romanian philosopher E.M. Cioran, who admired Borges's "world citizenship" and refusal to belong to any club that would have him as a member. (Cioran's affiliations included the fascist Iron Guard.) James inclines to conservatism, but definitely notreaction; he admires thinkers such as the anticommunist stalwart Jean-Francois Revel, who "has a lively appreciation of how people can get stuck with a view because it has become their identity," and he urges the view, quite humane, that humanism is closely bound up with ideals of freedom. Exemplary cogitations without a trace of jargon or better-read-than-thou condescension.
