Clive James: The Meaning of Recognition - New Essays, 2001-2005

Was it television that did this thing to Clive James — you know, the walking-while-talking bit, spitting witticisms, rolling out drolleries, amusing and sophisticated banter? Has this glib, into-the-camera stuff carried over to his essays? Yes, a little bit, I'm afraid.

James is a short, stout man with a round face and thinning hair who made the unlikely transition from paper to tape because of the quality of his scripts and his wry delivery. He gained a more intelligent audience than the rest of the tribe of trim and toothy presenters, but it has done some damage to his serious writing. The Metropolitan Critic a few decades ago was an impressively accessible and alert commentary on contemporary culture. He wrote with wit on subjects from the lowest rungs of pop culture to the heights of serious literature.

After leaving Australia as a young man, James made an impression as a lively, funny television critic for the Observer. He then displayed his wider talent for criticism in a way that balanced scholarship with humour, high culture with low, a compelling mix — like having Marilyn Monroe brilliantly playing Ophelia.

Readers who remember the James of then will be disappointed that he so often slips into glibness in these recent essays. He strains for effect, sometimes getting there, but too often achieving only sparklers, not the rockets of old. And yet, and yet ... some essays here are as good as anything produced by contemporary commentators and show he still has, at his best, the gift of the elegant gab.

In The Hidden Art of Bing Crosby, James probes his way through popular music in a way that gives new perspectives even to this longtime fan of the groaners, crooners and sirens. The Meaning of Recognition, a longish essay on Australian poet Philip Hodgins, is a fine opening to the book and demonstrates his ability to tease out a poet's life and work in a way that any reader will understand.

The collection ends with the perceptive Save us from Celebrity and along the way are entertaining pieces on Primo Levi, the distinguished critic Frank Kermode, W.B. Yeats ("Yeats was a great poet who was also the industrious adept of a batso mystical philosophy") and Aldous Huxley. But don't bother with the political stuff.

In summary, even below his best, James is still very much worth the read.


* Gordon McLauchlan is an Auckland writer
* Picador, $34.95