Volume 28, Number 5 · April 2, 1981
On the Beat
By James Wolcott
First Reactions: Critical Essays 1968-1979
by Clive James
Knopf, 240 pp., $12.95
Unreliable Memoirs
by Clive James
Knopf, 171 pp., $10.00
Even in repose, Clive James gives off an industrious hum as he gears up for the next deadline, the next dispatch from Hollywood, Rome, Manhattan. Born in Australia and living in London, James is a journalist who is capable of knocking off several hundred entertaining words on everything from a fashion show in Paris for Vogue—'Ba-Boom! Ba-Boom! Flashing spotlights and doomy rock portend great things'—to an account of his 'breathtakingly wonderful' work-a-day life for a fashion mag called Honey. Whenever the London Observer isn't out on strike, he reaches more than a million readers with a surrealistically boppy TV column—a column so lively it makes his American counterparts (Michael Arlen, John J. O'Connor) look like statues with pigeons perched on their noses. James also appears often on British television, and occasionally interviews actresses and other rare birds for the ultra-chic Warholish gossip sheet Ritz. In his more bearing-down moods, he writes epic verse satires on politics and the London literary world (Britannia Bright's Bewilderment, Peregrine Prykkes's Pilgrimage), and contributes book reviews not only to these pages but also to The London Review of Books and the TLS. A busy bee; yet with all this buzzing hustle, Clive James hasn't made much of a dent in public awareness in this country.
Review, 2336 words
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