Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

Although intended as a work of literature, "Cultural Amnesia" has more in common with your local phone directory -- except that the phone directory contains more information. Like the phone directory, this book is a list of names in alphabetical order, but then, unlike the phone directory, a plethora of other names are thrown-in at random, often with no explanation of their significance. The conceit of the book is, of course, that if you are unfamiliar with these names, usually obscure Viennese Jewish writers of the last century, your erudition is too puny, and you have no business reading this book in the first place.For instance, an early chapter (remember, like the phone directory, it's in alphabetical order) is supposed to be about Jorge Luis Borges. And what does Herr Professor von James have to say about the celebrated old man? Nothing, because as with the rest of the book --zoom!-- he immediately veers off on a tangent. Reading the tortured prose of Professor von James is like watching an old-fashioned pinball machine, because from the starting-point of Jorge Luis Borges we are immediately bounced over to a discourse on  Moby-Dick , quickly followed by "One of my exemplars, Witold Gombrowicz," and from there to Thomas Mann, Igor Stravinsky, Sigmind Freud, Billy Wilder, Marlene Dietrich, Milos Foreman, Vaclav Havel, Eratosthenes, Erasmus, and Victoria Ocampo. All this on a single page! (p.66) Does any of it manage to make any sense? No, it's simply a mess of names dropped together. In speech, such word-salad would be diagnosed as hebephrenia, but here it is to be admired as the crowning achievement of one of . . . nay! THE World's Greatest Intellect.Similarly, the chapter on Alfred Einstein contains no information whatsoever on Alfred Einstein. If you don't already know who Alfred Einstein was, you're not gong to find out here. Instead, we are treated to ruminations about that old, old question, What immortal masterpieces would poor Schubert and Mozart have written had they not both died so young? It's a question usually posed to impress bored freshmen in music appreciation courses, but here, Herr Doktor von James gives it a new twist: not what would poor Schubert have written had he lived to a ripe old age, but what would he have written had he lived to be as old as Mozart was when he died? If you are left wondering what the possible significance of such an imponderable might be, it shows how shallow your thought is.Throughout the book, Herr Professor von James takes pains to mention his lofty academic achievements and how many languages in which he is fluent. It all makes me guess that because his advancement was so rapid, he skipped past the sixth grade, in which one is taught how to write a coherent paragraph or an essay on a single topic. But not only is this book a disorganized mess, the quality of writing is vile. The salient trademark of a hack writer is the overwrought metaphor or rancid simile -- such as, "Lending him almost irresistible force as a thinker was the riverine flow and clarity of his prose style . . ." (p.145) ("Prose style"? Why not just prose? Or style?) James continually uses "impact" in place of "effect." He uses such trite redundancies as "first and foremost" and "part and parcel," and I'm certain that if I keep slogging through this mess I'll find "at this point in time," too. In addition, there are numerous errors, maladroit punctuation and patently defective sentences throughout the book, and I suspect that even the proofreaders at W. W. Norton couldn't slog through this mess with out having their Eyes Glaze Over.How ironic that in this book, which has more mistakes than any other book I've seen, Professor James spends a chapter nit-picking over the writing of others, and he proclaims, "Competent writers always examine what they have put down. . . . Bad writers never examine anything." Like a schoolmarm, he criticizes (p.382) someone for saying, "'the hoi polloi,' when we should leave off the 'the' because 'the' is what 'hoi' means." But both Dryden and Byron wrote "the hoi polloi," and in Act I of ''Iolanthe,'' W. S. Gilbert wrote, "Twould fill with joy, And madness stark / the hoi polloi (a Greek remark)?'' Obviously those are inferior writers who need correction from The Great Clive James, and I assume that, if he is so persnickety about not using "the" with hoi polloi, he likewise refrains from using an article with other borrowed words such as "algebra" or "alcohol."A book like this one (certainly not this one, but one like this one) is supposed to entertain you with interesting facts and insight, but "Cultural Amnesia" is amazingly bereft of either. Instead, there's an abundance of mere opinion. Another reviewer here (likely from the camarilla of Objectivists) is irate that Herr Doktor von James has dismissed the novels of Ayn Rand as ". . . certainly among the worst books ever to be taken seriously." O.k., maybe Ms. Rand's books are awful, and maybe they aren't. But does Herr Doktor von James provide us with any reason for his dismissal? No. Apparently when you operate on such a lofty intellectual plane, it is only necessary for him to pronounce his verdict, and surely you must agree with him and perhaps apply yellow highlighter to the passage. This book consists of 25% name-dropping and 25% of such summary judgments, some of which --such as "Without a capacity for blaming the sterile, there can be no capacity for praising the vital" (p.127)-- are supposed to leave you stroking your whiskers, but other pronouncements are merely banal:"Carly Simon, who was brought up as a privileged child . . . no doubt took genuine satisfaction out of making money by herself."Duke Ellington's orchestra "could create its own world, and the truest statement ever made about Ellington's supremacy was that his orchestra was his instrument.""Ben Webster, I thought, was much possessed by Melody's incestuous love affair with her brother Rhythm." (Is that a banal sentence, or what?)Other such arbitrary proclamations (which Herr Doktor von James terms "detachable judgments") are not only inane, but they are wrong. "If the most brilliant mathematicians and computer engineers of 1945 could be brought here now and shown an ordinary laptop . . . they would have no idea of how it worked." (p.117) This statement reveals a profound ignorance of the subject. Other than, I suppose, the optical drive, computers have actually changed little over the years, other than the obvious fact that they have grown much smaller, and even Charles Babbage (1791-1871) would know that no matter how the trick was performed, the laptop was basically no more than a processor, memory and storage.In addition to the name dropping and baseless declarations, the most common tangent that Professor Dr. James veers of to is the Nazi genocide. Well . . . (clearing of throat) . . . yes, that is a very serious topic, and perhaps it is impossible to say enough about it, so the good professor dwells at length on the subject, and the book (even the chapter on Terry Gilliam) returns again and again to ruminate on the Nazis. Very well, but what new insight does Mr. Dr. James bring to the subject? His assessment of Hitler is thus: "He didn't know he was sick. He thought he was well." Throughout the book, he seems to be trying to convince us that the Holocaust was a bad idea. In another chapter (the one on Flaubert, naturally) he goes off on a tangent about how it would be a good thing if Islam were more tolerant of infidels. Do you really need this old windbag to tell you any of that?Now, if you are reading this, if you are interested in this tome, it may be that you aspire to become a top-drawer intellectual or at least appear to be one. That's nice, but do you really think that reading his panegyric to Tony Curtis or his analysis of the movie "Titanic" will help you achieve your goal? Will reading about his preference for David Letterman over Jay Leno or the junk about Carly Simon put you atop the brain heap? Don't spend $15 on this shallow book. Instead, go to the library and borrow the works of Oswald Spengler, and show everyone that's what you're reading. Then, spend the money you saved on a bottle of Pernod and a pince-nez.

CULTURAL AMNESIA is a book of over 100 essays that Clive James wrote over a 40 year period. The majority of the essays are about 20th century German, Austrian, and French cultural figures, but there are a few Russians, Asians, and Latin Americans in there as well.My favorite essays are the ones about the German & Austrian Jews that populated the Viennese cafes between the wars. Many Jewish intellectuals were denied university positions because they were Jews, so they turned the cafes into a university of their own. One especially good essay is about Egon Friedell who was not only a cabaret star but who also found time to write a cultural history of Europe in his spare time. When the Nazis came a knockin' he leapt out his apt window but (ever the conscientious humanist) yelled out a warning to those on the street below as he approached.Each essay is a kind of character sketch but also each essay contains invaluable cultural insights, some from the figures that he is sketching, and some from his own highly civilized brain (this guy has read everything and I would love a chance to peruse his library). In fact this book made me re-think what civilization is--I decided it is certain basic human decency (humane action under extreme historical conditions)and basic human qualities like understanding which of course isn't very basic at all. Anyway, you won't be sorry if you buy this book.Its one of those books that makes you feel more civilized just looking at it.James is a left of center kind of guy, but he is also a guy who has no patience for any kind of reductive catch-all theory of any kind. He's been everywhere and believes in the value of learning from experience. He's spent his life as a journalist and he always prefers the clarifying value of a fact over the seductive power of a theory--which in his view just seduces people away from sense. This is one reason he loves the worldly sophistication of the Viennese Jews who never lived in the safe confines of university communities (they couldn't), but remained in touch with everyday reality and everyday concerns and spoke in a way that everyone could understand. Hes none to fond of the Walter Benjamins & Jean Paul Sartres of the world. He also has no kind words for artists like Picasso & Borges who never seemed to be too terribly bothered by the political atrocities happening outside their studios/libraries.Each essay in this book is like a reckoning. Some good guys get saved from oblivion and some bad guys get kicked toward it, which is what you want from a highly civilized compendium of 20th century cultural knowledge/thriller, right?Highest recommendation.

I love Clive - he shaped my life. It's so great to sit down and read a thinking person. Intelligence and calm wit ... and all the time, that wonderful voice in your head. Thank you Clive.

Brilliant book delivered quickly, just as described

This remains one of the most erudite, interesting and engaging books I have ever read. I am amazed at the skill and breadth of CJ and his humour always gives me a wry chuckle. This book now has more annotations than any other book I have in my library- enough said

delivery and quality excellent.... thank you to all..

very good