Clive James
Clive James
Clive James AO CBEis an Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist, best known for his autobiographical series Unreliable Memoirs, for his chat shows and documentaries on British television and for his prolific journalism. He has lived and worked in the United Kingdom since 1962...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionMemoirist
Date of Birth7 October 1939
CountryAustralia
art writing performing
Writing is a performance art for me. They're very closely aligned, writing and performing. But I'm a writer, not a performer.
art writing years
Almost 70 years have gone by, and I've still got that feeling when I write... Writing, for me, is still it. It has always been the basis of everything I do. I'm a writer who performs, not a performer who writes. I love the act of writing. It's still a thrill for me.
art reading writing
Reading and writing... are exciting. The most exciting things I can think of. And now, as I reflect... I have to say that I've been lucky in that I'm amused by what I do - sufficiently amused.
writing people too-much
People should be stopped from writing poetry. There's far too much of it. And if they're any good, they'll go ahead anyways.
writing important age
This quality becomes important at a time when almost everyone is a poet. And as I said, we live in an age where almost everybody is a poet, but scarcely anyone can write a poem.
reading writing interesting
I work on the assumption, or let it be the fear, that the reader will stop reading if I stop being interesting.
stars war writing
Humphrey Searle writes music that sounds like the theme from 'Star Wars' played backwards through a washing machine.
book writing age
Little books are the things to write at my age, I've decided. Avoid the big ones, go for the little ones.
dog art writing
What is Camille Paglia doing, writing that an actress as gifted as Anne Heche has the mental depth of a pancake? How many pancake brains could do what Heche did with David Mamet's dialogue in Wag the Dog? No doubt Heche has been stuck with a few bad gigs, but Paglia, of all people, must be well aware that being an actress is not the same safe ride as being the tenured university professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
writing thinking want
It's a big thing to call yourself a poet. All I can say is that I have always written poems. I don't think I'm interested in any discussion about whether I'm a good poet, a bad poet or a great poet. But I am sure, I want to write great poems. I think every poet should want that.
writing prose-and-poetry formulas
Writers quite often starve. And I'm mainly just writing critical prose and poetry, that's a formula for starvation.
memorable writing people
I try to be specific. One thought at a time. Clear. Articulate. And above all, memorable, if you can be. You'd like to write phrases that people can't forget as soon as they read them.
worry world alive
Stop worrying - nobody gets out of this world alive.
art new-york believe
The provincial intellectual is doomed to arguing at low level... there is still no Australian literary world, not in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide. It is some consolation to realise that there is no literary world in Birmingham or Los Angeles either. I have heard there is one in Montreal, but I don't believe it. The literary world is in London and New York, the only cities big enough to sustain magazines which can afford to reject copy.