Books by Clive James
“What do you admire about it? I’m in awe of his ability to weave such a vivid tale of his childhood encompassing real tragedy like the heartbreakingly sad tale of losing his dad during the war while still being one of the funniest books I’ve ever read.” Read more...
Mike Gayle, Novelist
“He has the ability to bring you into his writing, even when he’s writing about things that are in some ways utterly trivial and often completely forgotten, like British TV of the 1970s. He has a way of turning each of those subjects into a wonderful essay – an exercise in cabaret criticism – about values. Values, I think, are his real subject. The overriding lesson of his work is that categories – high art, low art, television, theatre – are misleading guides to value. That even runs at a deeper, moral level in James’s work about the larger categories – provincial and metropolitan, for instance. He’s a provincial guy who comes to the city, but his provincial experience is in lots of ways richer than his metropolitan experience. It’s the rejection of categories in place of values that is the Montaigne-like takeaway in all his work.” Read more...
Adam Gopnik on his Favourite Essay Collections
Adam Gopnik, Journalist
Interviews where books by Clive James were recommended
Adam Gopnik on his Favourite Essay Collections
What makes a great essayist? Who had it, who didn’t? And whose work left the biggest mark on the New Yorker? Longtime writer for the magazine, Adam Gopnik, picks out five masters of the craft
The Best Feel Good Books, recommended by Mike Gayle
Sometimes we all need the novelistic equivalent of a hot cup of cocoa and a warm blanket. We asked the novelist Mike Gayle, who appears at the Fleet Street Quarter Festival of Words this week, to recommend us five heartwarming feel good books that leave their reader comforted and entertained.
