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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' 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' lifelong engagement with the written word is a captivating valentine from one of the great literary minds of our time.
- Sales Rank: #4986410 in Books
- Published on: 2016-01-12
- Formats: Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.75" h x .50" w x 5.25" l,
- Running time: 3 Hours
- Binding: MP3 CD
Review
"A collection of beautifully thought-out, piquant essays, some only a few pages, that survey what [James] has been reading with the clock ticking. The results are entirely free of self-pity, and emanate vitality and invention . . . James relishes the limited reading time he has and makes no bones about it, providing sparkling commentary on his old favorites and new discoveries."—Publishers Weekly (Publishers Weekly)
"A box of bonbons for devoted readers"—Booklist (Booklist)
‘With James, one hopes fervently that the finale is only just beginning.’—Evening Standard. (Evening Standard 2015-08-06)
‘The author delivers a sign-off of substance… The unadulterated love of literature proves infectious and a little humbling.’—James Kidd, the Independent. (James Kidd The Independent 2015-08-06)
‘The literary judgements in Latest Readings are as a sound as ever… [James’s] credo: ‘The critic should write to say not ‘look how much I’ve read’ but ‘look at this, it’s wonderful’. I submit: reader, look at this book, it’s wonderful.’—Philip Collins, the Times. (Philip Collins The Times 2015-08-22)
“This book possesses an undercurrent of brave, unsentimental reflection; the author is intermittently philosophical and, in the face of death, funny.”—Thomas Swick, Weekly Standard (Thomas Swick Weekly Standard)
"[James] suggests that a critic 'should write to say, not 'look how much I've read,' but 'look at this, it's wonderful.' ' I can think of no better advice to give for James's new book, as well as Manning's Balkan Trilogy. Look at these, they're wonderful."—Robert Gray, Shelf Awareness (Robert Gray Shelf Awareness)
“For the literature-obsessed, this slim volume is a delectable gift, a reminder of why one reads at all, especially when the mortal countdown timer is ticking loudly. And it proves that James is the rare literary critic who can speak deeply to a general audience, with a sense of humor and levity that suggests that high art can indeed be for everyone.”—NPR Books (NPR Books)
"If there is such a thing as a reader of genius, then Clive James is it. The pieces in Latest Readings are small, but small in the way that a Patek Philippe watch is—in other words, gleaming and intricately assembled miniatures."—John Banville, New York Review of Books (John Banville New York Review of Books)
"Pick up Latest Readings. It’s wonderful."—Michael Dirda, Washington Post (Michael Dirda Washington Post)
“For a book written near to death, with 'the clock ticking', there’s nothing depressing about this. It’s as light-hearted and enthusiastic as the best of his work; every passage a palpable pleasure and every essay full of provocative observations.”—Hans Rollman, Popmatters (Hans Rollman Popmatters)
“The only complaint that people who consider serious reading to be essential to their lives can have with this book, is that it is over too soon. Latest Readings is an economical summing up of a long literary life. A life that James’s readers will hope contains more years, more writing, and much more reading.”—Larry Thornberry, American Spectator (Larry Thornberry American Spectator)
"James is a critic inimitably and undeniably himself. Every sentence echoes with the confidence and calm of decades of thoughtful, attentive reading."—Maggie Galehouse, Houston Chronicle (Maggie Galehouse Houston Chronicle)
'His qualities are his capacious intelligence, sardonic voice and fondness for wordplay and paradox...James has approached the time of his vanishing with grace and good humour, not sentimentality or anger. These essays and poems are death-haunted but radiant with the felt experience of what it means to be alive, even when mortally sick, especially when mortally sick'-Jason Cowley, Financial Times (Jason Cowley Financial Times)
"The courageous James is keeping his vitality and critical eye intact as his existential clock winds down. James writes in an endearingly personal voice about recommitting himself to stocking his ever-growing home library, and how the joy he takes in reading and collecting books hasn’t diminished, unlike his physical state. Each of Latest Reading’s slim, brisk essays feels like sitting with a genial old friend as he recites from and comments on the pile of books he keeps close at hand."—ArtsFuse (ArtsFuse)
"[James's] splendid survival since against the odds has had the paradoxical effect of reacquainting readers on both sides of the Atlantic with just how great a figure he has been and how much we stand to lose at the end of the kindnesses of fate and modern medicine."—Buffalo News (Buffalo News)
“For those who prefer something more literary, this year’s collection of Clive James’s essays on a variety of literary topics, Latest Readings, is an eye-opener. Mr. James is terminally ill. This is sanity, humor and acuity in the face of death.”—Mary Beard, Wall Street Journal (Mary Beard Wall Street Journal)
“Latest Readings is a plain demonstration that Mr. James remains as learned and as funny as any critic on earth."—Dwight Garner, New York Times (Dwight Garner New York Times)
From the Author
Virginia Woolf wrote that reading is “a pursuit which devours a great deal of time, and is yet apt to leave behind it nothing very substantial.” Do you agree?
Luckily for me, I am not threatened by the kind of illness that eventually led Virginia Woolf into the river. I'm just tired. Being that, I find that reading is more rewarding than ever. If I read something I've read before, I'm refreshed by being able to bring to it a new angle based on experience. And if I read something new, I do so with a new hunger, and, as far as I can tell, a whole new clarity. Only just lately I have been going right through Empson's poems again, and finding them as brilliant as they are elusive; and I have been reading Browning's The Ring and the Book seriously for the first time right through, and have found it to be a wonderful mixture of genius and willful obliquity. I only wish I had enough time left to recite it aloud: when you try that, even for just a single page, you find that its weird faults are impossible to smooth over. So my critical urge is still active.
How has your response to books changed as your life has progressed?
My response to books has improved throughout my life, until now, finally, I am fit to be a proper student. There ought to be a university for the old and sick, where, unless you're on your last legs, you aren't allowed into the library. I have this vision of nonagenerians taking their first crack at, say, Pope's Homer. Actually I'm about to read that one again, but I'm far too young.
"Clive James, brilliant to the (near) end, turns his readings and re-readings of everyone and everything from Hemingway and Conrad to Patrick O'Brian and Game of Thrones into sharp, funny meditations on—among much else—class, beauty, mimicry, memory, manhood, death (other people's), and life (his own). Long may his dazzling, long farewell continue."—Salman Rushdie
"Clive James's inevitable humor, sanity, erudition, enthusiasm, and crystal keenness are everywhere evident in Latest Readings, but perhaps its greatest grace is the opportunity it gives to feel as if you're spending time in his company, listening and learning for at least a little while longer. If its mini essays (and some not so mini) seem to float from James's mind into yours, it is only because a lifetime of reading, thinking, feeling, and formulating has gone into them, registering the pure, responsive authority of a writer with nothing left to prove but so much left to say."—James Walcott
About the Author
Born in Australia, Clive James lives in Cambridge, England. He is the author of Unreliable Memoirs; a volume of selected poems, Opal Sunset; the best-selling Cultural Amnesia; and the translator of The Divine Comedy by Dante. He has written for the New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic. He is an Officer of the Order of Australia and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Graeme Malcolm has performed on Broadway as Pharaoh in "Aida" and as Sir Edward Ramsay in "The King and I". His television credits include "Law & Order", "Against the Law", "Criminal Intent", and "Guiding Light". He has narrated hundreds of audiobooks.
Most helpful customer reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
The love of reading, a life of reading
By R. M. Peterson
Clive James is winding down. Yet he still has the urge to read and to write. So in this book he reports and reflects on his recent reading. LATEST READINGS is a slight book -- 180 pages with generous margins, large type, and blank pages between its many chapters. In truth, it is James Lite. Still, it is a refreshing treat for other inveterate literary readers who enjoy James's distinctive style and wit.
The four authors that James discusses the most throughout the book are Joseph Conrad (after re-reading "Nostromo" he realizes that it is "one of the greatest books I have ever read"), Ernest Hemingway, Olivia Manning, and Anthony Powell. He so lauds Manning's two trilogies that I think I will have to read them. There is a chapter on Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey novels; when his daughter gave him the first one to read, "Master and Commander", she "was like a drug dealer handing out a free sample." Some of the books discussed I was not familiar with, but now they are on my radar as items I would like to get to, Insh'allah -- books like "Drayneflete Revealed" by Osbert Lancaster, "Exhibits of the Sun" by Stephen Edgar, and "Florence Nightingale" by Mark Bostridge.
Clive James being Clive James, he zings a few people, among them Gore Vidal, V. S. Naipaul, and Yasser Arafat. And James being James, he sings the praises of Philip Larkin.
A recurring theme that especially resonated with me is culling books as we down-size and become more realistic about the fact that death will soon o'ertake us with so many books still unread. Occasionally James would limp the half-mile into downtown Cambridge and visit Hugh's bookstall ("one of the great bookstalls on earth"), and browse. He would pick up a book with a frisson of excitement. "The books I already had in the house presumably once generated the same sort of charge when I contemplated buying them. Now there they were, still in their thousands despite the recent winnowing. I roamed slowly among them: old purchases begging to be read again even as the new purchases came in at the rate of one plastic shopping bag full every week. Insanity, insanity. Or, as Johnson might have said, vanity, vanity."
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Last Readings?
By Charlus
This latest book by Clive James does not wear its valedictory atmosphere lightly. Diagnosed with leukemia in 2010, he was prepared to read nothing longer than a news article until Yale University Press made him an offer he couldn't refuse. So here is a short book made up of very short chapters on his random thoughts about books he has either been reading or re-reading in recent years.
As they say, it's not quantity but quality. James is able to squeeze more wit, insight and craft into 4 pages on a book than other writers can accomplish in 30. Here he is on an American publication of Anthony Powell's roman-fleuve:
"...the Americans had, in their usual way, overdone the reverence, so that any of the four compilations was too bulky to take on a train, thus defeating one of the chief pleasures that Powell offers: to read, while traveling in a second-class carriage, about the kind of people who used to travel in first."
He has a clear preference for books that engage in political or social commentary, both in fiction and nonfiction. Many of the books that earn high praise, such as Olivia Manning's trilogies or Sally Bedell Smith on the Kennedys, reflect his interest in how the real world works. But the poet in him has very kind words for Kipling, Larkin and Richard Howard and succinctly explains why. And he finds delight in writers he has read many years before, some obscure like Osbert Lancaster.
I will end by an extended quote of his thoughts concerning this last writer. If this doesn't make you want to pick up this book, nothing I can say will persuade you:
"As I read, I can feel it all slipping away into time as I am myself. Probably all this stuff-this last stretch of a privileged social history-will never again come back into favor. Perhaps we loved reading about it out there in the colonies only because we, the colonized, were even more reluctant than the imperialists to let go of a dying empire. John Carey, the cleverest of all critics in a generation of clever critics, has always hated that whole self-consciously arty era, to the point of arguing that it wasn't artistic at all. He thought that all good things were in the grip of a lucky elite, and needed to be prized loose. He was probably right. Certainly the whole cozy shebang is hard to explain to Americans, who live in a proclaimed democracy, and not in a stratified society whose top layer gives up its advantages as slowly as it can. But even Carey was obliged, when picking out his fifty most enjoyable books of the twentieth century, to admit that Waugh's Decline and Fall was one of them. It's one of the good things about the study of literature: taste triumphs prejudice. I feel the same way about Osbert Lancaster's lineup of slim volumes: I ought to disapprove, but I can't leave them alone." (p.71)
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Last Readings?
By reading man
First, you're unlikely to agree that all the books Clive James includes in LATEST READINGS are what you'd chose if you were in his circumstances (COPD, terminal leukemia). In fact, it's likely that some of his choices wouldn't be yours if you were in the best of health with almost certainly many years of reading time ahead of you.
Anthony Powell, for example. I have read almost all of his books over the years, and I'd say A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME is the least impressive of them, unless you're awed by mere length. Perhaps you have to be British to be an admirer of this overlong, overdrawn account of the social adventures of Nick Jenkins, the narrator of all 12 (or is it 13?) volumes and a candidate for the most faceless character in modern fiction, especially given the reader's lengthy acquaintance with him. And the career of Widmerpol, the villain of the piece and the central character after Jenkins, is as one-dimensional and predictable as can be, excepting his highly implausible end in the last volume. Any comparison of Powell with Proust (and this is too often made) is laughable. It's the difference between an artist and a social novelist who aims at depth and at best provides entertainment. But as I said, maybe you have to be British: Ian Rankin chose DANCE as the one book he'd take with him to a desert island (on Desert Island Discs), though I think he'd have more fun with the collected works of John Dickson Carr.
Similarly, Olivia Manning is a good novelist, but she doesn't deserve the lavish praise that James heaps on her two trilogies. Perhaps nostalgia for the period about which she writes is the decisive factor for him?
On the other hand, to reread Conrad after 50 years and find UNDER WESTERN EYES to be one of the great novels in the language, as James does, testifies to a masterful taste for fiction, since the book is a genuine candidate for anyone's last reading list.
More than his individual choices for "readings", James lifelong interest in literature is inspiring to the nth degree. As he approaches nothingness, he makes it clear that reading has been a major matter in his life, that it's made him what he is: a wise chap who understands how important books are in a full and meaningful life. For that he deserves unqualified admiration.
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