Unreliable Memoirs

Author: Clive James
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393336085
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
Nearly 30 years ago, James wrote a refreshingly candid book that made no claims to be accurate, precise, or entirely truthful, only to entertain. Long unavailable in the U.S., "Unreliable Memoirs" is being made available to American readers.

Unreliable Memoirs

Author: Clive James
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 1447275497
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Book Description
The first instalment of his famed autobiography, Unreliable Memoirs is a hilarious and touching introduction to the life of the author, broadcaster, critic and poet, Clive James. 'It is one of the most tender, frank and, above all, funny accounts of growing up I have ever read' –Michael Parkinson In the first instalment of James's memoirs we follow the young Clive on his journey from boyhood to the cusp of manhood, when his days of wearing short trousers are finally behind him. Battling with school, girls, various relatives, the local wildlife, and an overwhelming desire to be a superhero, Clive's adventures growing up in the suburbs of post-war Sydney are a hair-raising and uproarious evocation of a lost world. I was born in 1939. The other big event of that year was the outbreak of the Second World War, but for the moment that did not affect me . . . 'James cannot find it within himself to write a dull paragraph' – The Times With an introduction from P.J. O'Rourke, journalist, satirist and author of Holidays in Hell. Unreliable Memoirs is the first book of memoir from Clive James. Continue his story with Falling Towards England.

Unreliable Memoirs

Author: Clive James
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039307286X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Book Description
A best-selling classic around the world, Clive James’s hilarious memoir has long been unavailable in the United States. Before James Frey famously fabricated his memoir, Clive James wrote a refreshingly candid book that made no claims to be accurate, precise, or entirely truthful, only to entertain. In an exercise of literary exorcism, James set out to put his childhood in Australia behind him by rendering it as part novel, part memoir. Now, nearly thirty years after it first came out in England, Unreliable Memoirs is again available to American readers and sure to attract a whole new generation that has, through his essays and poetry, come to love James’s inimitable voice.

North Face of Soho

Author: Clive James
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 0330474375
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Book Description
From Fleet Street to the television, North Face of Soho is the fascinating and hilarious fourth volume of memoir from much-loved author, poet and broadcaster Clive James. '[James] delivers his gags with honed elegance' – Sunday Times It is 1968. Newly married, dressed in the style of the times ('a frenzy of bad judgement'), Clive James is leaving the cloistered world of Cambridge academia and setting his sights once again on the lights of literary London. Luckily for him and us, this crack at the big city would go rather better than last time. Still writing songs, directing sketch shows and trying to break into the movie business, with very mixed success, Clive eventually lands a weekly TV column at the Observer, finds his metier and rapidly becomes a household name. Credited with inventing a genre, Clive turns his attention to the previously critically disregarded medium of television to comment on the entire culture. Through the Seventies and early Eighties, from Fleet Street to Hollywood, from Russian department stores to Paris fashion shows, this is the hilarious, entertaining and honest story of a life lived to the full. North Face of Soho is the fourth book of memoir from Clive James. Continue his story with The Blaze of Obscurity.

Tales From A Broad

Author: Fran Lebowitz
Publisher: Monsoon Books
ISBN: 9814358452
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
When a frazzled New Yorker who is mad, bad and dangerous to know lands in Asia, life is never quite the same again - for anyone ... Fran Lebowitz cheerfully admits that she is intergalactically self-absorbed, a little crazy and really, really hard to please - just ask her eternally patient and bemused husband, Frank. But when her life in the fast land falls apart - again - it's time for a miracle. Reeling from the worst week of her life, topped off by her most important client stabbing her in the back, Fran realises that she's almost forgotten what her family looks like. She wants out of the rat race and her hectic life as a literary agent - and time to be herself, a real wife and mother to her two small children. Good old Frank delivers what seems the answer to her prayers - to escape for three months to Singapore while he does some business. But what starts out as a little break and a very big culture shock for all concerned marks the hilarious beginning of the end of the old Fran - and a whole new life.

From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant

Author: Alex Gilvarry
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101554312
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 206

Book Description
The critically acclaimed debut from Alex Gilvarry, a darkly comic love letter to New York, told through the eyes of Boy Hernandez: Filipino immigrant, glamour junkie, Guantánamo detainee. Alex Gilvarry's widely acclaimed first novel is the story of designer Boy Hernandez: Filipino immigrant, New York glamour junkie, Guantánamo detainee. Locked away indefinitely and accused of being linked to a terrorist plot, Boy prepares for the tribunal of his life with this intimate confession, a dazzling swirl of soirees, runways, and hipster romance that charts one small man's undying love for New York City and his pursuit of the big American dream—even as the present nightmare of detainment chisels away at his vital wit and chutzpah. A New York Times Editor's Choice, From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant unveils two of America's most illusory realms—high fashion and Homeland Security—in a funny, wise, and beguiling, and Kafkaesque tale for our strange times.

The Blaze of Obscurity: Unreliable Memoirs Book 5

Author: Clive James
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 1743036825
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 333

Book Description
For many people, Clive James will always be a TV presenter first and foremost, and a writer second -- this despite the fact that his adventures with the written word took place before, during and after his time on the small screen. Nevertheless, for those who remember clips of Japanese endurance gameshows and Egyptian soap operas, Clive reinventing the news or interviewing Hefner and Hepburn, Polanski and Pavarotti, Clive's 'Postcards' from Kenya, Shanghai and Dallas, or Clive James Racing Driver, Clive's rightful place does seem to be right there -- on the box, in our homes, and almost one of the family. However you think of him, though, and whatever you remember him for, The Blaze of Obscurity is perhaps Clive's most brilliant book yet. Part Clive James on TV and part Clive James on TV, it tells the inside story of his years in television, shows Clive on top form both then and now, and proves -- once and for all -- that Clive has a way with words ... whatever the medium.

Inventory of a Life Mislaid: An Unreliable Memoir

Author: Marina Warner
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0008347603
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Book Description
A luminous memoir of post-war childhood, adventure and loss on the banks of the Nile. ‘Wonderful – a brave, inventive, touching distillation of memory and imagination’ JENNY UGLOW

May Week Was In June

Author: Clive James
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 0330474340
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Book Description
It is the middle of the Swinging Sixties, and Clive James doesn't have much to show for it. May Week Was In June is the third hilarious, tender instalment of memoir from the iconic author, poet and broadcaster. 'Nobody writes like Clive James' – Spectator Arriving at Cambridge University in a cold October in 1964, the young Clive James has yet to find a footing in the literary world. His move from Sydney and three years of hand-to-mouth existence in London has produced nothing but a handful of unpublished poems. Pembroke College Cambridge offers a way out, if not up . . . Ignoring the curriculum, he throws himself into writing songs, performing and film reviewing. “If something was irrelevant, I could do it.” He takes Footlights to the Edinburgh Fringe, writes for the New Stateman and works on Expresso Drongo, arguably the worst film ever screened at the NFT . He finds a lifelong passion in criticism, continues his poetry, falls in love with Italian art and eventually, in May Week, he marries. These are the years that formed the man Clive James – told with his trademark erudition and humour. May Week Was In June is the third book of memoir from Clive James. Continue his story with North Face of Soho.

Reliable Essays

Author: Clive James
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 0330475479
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Book Description
Hilarious and trenchant, Reliable Essays collects the most memorable works of criticism and travel writing from well-loved author and broadcaster, Clive James. With an introduction by Julian Barnes. '[An] intellectual as well as a joker, a wise man as well as a wit' – Observer Whether discussing arts, politics or culture, Clive James opens up new avenues for thought whilst never being less than wonderfully entertaining. From his 'Postcard from Rome' to his observations on Margaret Thatcher, and his insights into Heaney, Larkin and Orwell, Clive is equally at home discussing the nature of celebrity and considering serious political matters. With brilliantly funny examinations of characters like Barry Humphries, Germaine Greer and Marilyn Monroe, this is a thoughtful, analytical and thoroughly enjoyable selection of Clive at his best. '[I]immensely enjoyable' – Telegraph Clive James (1939–2019) was a broadcaster, critic, poet, memoirist and novelist. His much-loved, influential and hilarious television criticism is collected in Clive James On Television. His encyclopaedic study of culture and politics in the twentieth century, Cultural Amnesia, remains perhaps the definitive embodiment of his wide-ranging talents as a critic. Praise for Clive James: 'The perfect critic' – A.O. Scott, New York Times 'There can't be many writers of my generation who haven't been heavily influenced by Clive James' – Charlie Brooker 'A wonderfully witty and intelligent writer' – Verity Lambert