Latest readings / Clive James.
Material type:
TextPublisher: New Haven and London : Yale University Press, [2015]Copyright date: ©2015Description: ix, 180 pages ; 21 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 0300213190
- 9780300213195
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Main Library | NonFiction | 028.9 J27 | Checked out | 05/05/2024 | 33111008053379 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
An esteemed literary critic shares his final musings on books, his children, and his own impending death
In 2010, Clive James was diagnosed with terminal leukemia. Deciding that "if you don't know the exact moment when the lights will go out, you might as well read until they do," James moved his library to his house in Cambridge, where he would "live, read, and perhaps even write." James is the award-winning author of dozens of works of literary criticism, poetry, and history, and this volume contains his reflections on what may well be his last reading list. A look at some of James's old favorites as well as some of his recent discoveries, this book also offers a revealing look at the author himself, sharing his evocative musings on literature and family, and on living and dying.
As thoughtful and erudite as the works of Alberto Manguel, and as moving and inspiring as Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture and Will Schwalbe's The End of Your Life Book Club, this valediction to James's lifelong engagement with the written word is a captivating valentine from one of the great literary minds of our time.
Introduction -- Hemingway in the beginning -- Revisiting Conrad -- Novels in sequence -- Patrick O'Brian and his salty hero -- War leader -- Sebald and the battle in the air -- Phantom flying saucer -- Under Western eyes -- Anthony Powell, time lord -- Treasuring Osbert Lancaster -- American power -- Kipling and the widow-maker -- Speer in Spandau -- Shakespeare and Johnson -- Naipaul's nastiness -- Movie books -- Women in Hollywood -- Extra shelves -- Always Philip Larkin -- Villa America -- Angles on Hitler -- Stephen Edgar, Australian ace -- John Howard extends his reign -- Hemingway at the end -- On wit -- Richard Wilbur's precept -- When creation is perverse -- Conrad's greatest victory -- Coda.