For my first Clive James book I chose this over "Cultural Amnesia" because the short, accessible essays in "Amnesia" came off in my bookstore browsing as imperious, even glib; I like non-fiction that has some depth. As a result I was often out of my own. James is the exceedingly rare polymath critic who seems to know everything important about every field of art, and he writes for readers who are already familiar with his subjects. This means that James's essays aren't the place to be introduced to new writers, poets, and media; their purpose is to throw new light on what you've already thought about. So the first 160 pages, about poets, were a struggle—I know less about poetry than about almost any other art form, and lack even the vocabulary to discuss it intelligently. The next section, on fiction and literature, was better going, with essays on Chandler, Le Carré, Primo Levi, Mark Twain, and Casanova. The final two parts, on culture and media, were the best. I enjoyed more articles than I can list, and particularly loved the short piece on Peter Bogdanovich, a far more interesting figure than I'd known.

This writing originally appeared in various periodicals from the 1970s through the 2000s, and James updates each with a postscript putting it in context and adding thoughts that were unformed or left unexpressed at the time. His postscript to the Twain essay astonishingly becomes a thought piece on the societal impact of holding politicians to wishful ideals of how private life should be managed, with the Bill Clinton scandal as an example, and he makes some excellent points that I have not seen made by another commentator in 20 years. Brilliant pieces like these, so unexpected, make the book well worth the weeks I spent plowing dutifully through thousands of words above my intellectual pay grade. Someone who's more given to skimming might find them faster. ( )