“Andrew Anthony on Cultural Amnesia by Clive James”

“What completed my social amnesia, however, was Cultural Amnesia, James’s compendious collection of biographical essays on influential cultural and political figures, as well as more obscure subjects, like the young Nazi-resistor Sophie Scholl. Published in 2007, the book garnered some approving reviews, but I don’t think the full depth and breadth of James’s achievement has been widely acknowledged.” 

At normblog.

I remember reading through this book half-a-year-ago, racing through it at one sitting. I was home, sick with a slight case of the flu, or just run-down from work, more likely, and spent the day in bed reading when I should have been catching up on sleep. Somewhere in the book, Clive James makes the comment that a person living in the comfortable market democracies of the West might make a quiet and useful life for themselves by working at a  ’small’ and safe job,  if such a thing exists, while soaking up on all the books and culture readily on offer in modern life during their ‘off’ time. Witness Google Books. I always imagine that person when I see an enveloped-in-a bubble-of solitude soul in the hospital cafeteria, head buried in a book, occasionally checking the clock for the end of break time, otherwise completely absorbed.