Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

By Clive James

W. W. Norton, 2007. 876 pgs. Nonfiction

This fascinating and unusual book includes over 100 biographical sketches—some of people you’ve heard of and some of people you’ve never heard of (I recognized about half the names). Each sketch gives some information about the individual—often with a slant to a very particular aspect of the person or their contribution to civilization. Each sketch also seems to become a platform for launching into a related or sometimes apparently unrelated topic, such as in the sketch on Marc Bloch, wherein he launches into a diatribe against Ezra Pound.

There are a fabulous number of very quotable passages (I jotted down my favorites as I went—it’s not often a book prompts that sort of reaction). Here are three of my favorites: Speaking of Camus he states “The Gods poured success on him but it could only darken his trench coat: it never soaked him to the skin”. During the sketch on Dick Cavett is found “It might be said that the United States is the first known case of a civilization developing through disintegration”. Also in the vignette on Bloch he writes “Admirers of Ouspensky, Gurdjieff and Wilhelm Reich were all under the illusion that profundity can be attained by embracing principles with no basis in science. The occult and the mystically profound are perennial shortcuts to a supervening vision: a worldview without the world”.

Superbly written, erudite, literary, and humorous--this work is a very good read.