As of this Writing: The Essential Essays, 1968-2002

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W. W. Norton & Company, 2003 - 619 pàgines
It is Impossible not to be impressed by the remarkable range and erudition of the irrepressible, intellectually voracious, Australian-born critic Clive James. As of This Writing is James's most ambitious and expansive work to date, a book that features forty-nine penetrating essays on poetry, film, fiction, and criticism, presenting the most comprehensive view of his writings between 1968 and 2002. In the tradition of Edmund Wilson-himself the subject of the author's most famous early work, included here-James has throughout his career sought to be a Metropolitan Critic and to operate in the vital space between the hack reviewers of the periodicals and the dust contractors of the universities. Rather than shunning popular tastes, James has sought to mold them. Whether in the pages of The New Yorker, the Times Literary Supplement, or the New Yorker, Review of Books, James has written as lucidly and intelligently about daytime television, Marilyn Monroe, and lurid romance novels (see A Blizzard of Tiny Kisses) as about poetry, fiction, history, and philosophy. Moreover, James is a brilliant stylist, so perceptive (and trenchantly funny) that he often renders the twisted cultural terrain of the twentieth century far more accessible than it is generally portrayed elsewhere. Whether commenting on poets like Seamus Heaney and Randall Jarrell, novelists like D.H. Lawrence and James Agee, or filmmakers like Fellini and Bogdanovich, James delights his readers with a wide-ranging energy and critical aplomb, not to mention a literary education that few can rival. Separated into four sections-Poetry, Fiction and Literature, Culture and Criticism, and Visual Images-As of This Writing is the best introduction to James's massive body of work, a book that will give the intrepid reader a thorough cultural education in one volume. Spanning the entire range of his career, it includes, with additional notes by the author, classic essays like Nabokov's Grand Folly and On Auden's Death as well as recent pieces such as Les Murray's Master Spirits and Primo Levi's Last Will and Testament. This is the definitive collection of writings by one of the greatest literary critics of our age.

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Continguts

On Audens Death
3
On Seamus Heaney
19
Robert Lowells Marble Chips
25
Four Essays on Philip Larkin
38
Poetrys Ideal Critic Randall Jarrell
84
Two Essays on Theodore Roethke
90
Charles Johnstons Catacomb Graffiti
102
Nabokovs Grand Folly
117
CULTURE AND CRITICISM
347
F R Leavis in America
349
A Whole Gang of Noise Susan Sontag
358
Germaine Greer Getting Married Later
362
The Metropolitan Critic
370
It is of a Windiness Lillian Hellman
387
Mailers Marilyn
394
From Log Cabin to Log Cabin
409

Stevie Smith Not Drowning but Waving
123
Galway Kinnells Great Poem
129
Les Murray and His Master spirits
136
The Great Generation of Australian Poetry
149
FICTION AND LITERATURE
163
D H Lawrence in Transit
165
The Perpetual Promise of James Agee
179
The Sherlockologists
190
Raymond Chandler
201
Bitter Seeds Solzhenitsyn
214
Go Back to the Cold
227
A Blizzard of Tiny Kisses
236
A Death in Life
245
Primo Levis Last Will and Testament
259
Primo Levi and the Painted Veil
274
The All of Orwell
284
Mark Twain Journalist
305
Casanova Comes Again
328
Hamlet in Perspective
340
HardCore Gore
421
Evelyns Waughs Last Stand
427
As a Matter of Tact
436
These Staggering Questions
443
How Montale Earned His Living
456
N V Rampant Meets Martin Amis
466
Hitlers Unwitting Exculator
470
He That Played the Fool
497
Bertrand Russell Struggles After Heaven
502
VISUAL IMAGES
519
The New Diaghilev
521
Pier Paolo Pain in the Neck
525
Mondo Fellini
539
Who Was That Masked Man?
561
The Gentle Slope to Castalia
568
Pictures in Silver
585
Index
605
Copyright

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Sobre l'autor (2003)

Clive James (1939--2019), author of the best-selling Cultural Amnesia and Poetry Notebook, was an Officer of the Order of Australia and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. His writing appeared in the New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic.

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