Cultural Amnesia; Necessary Memories from the History and the Arts, Clive James, signed first edition, 2007
Cultural Amnesia by Clive James is an expansive and highly personal work of literary and cultural criticism, first published in 2007. Structured through a series of essays on writers, artists, philosophers and political figures, the book reflects on the intellectual and moral history of the twentieth century, with particular attention to the rise of totalitarianism and the preservation of cultural memory. Drawing on figures ranging from Kafka and Camus to Hannah Arendt and Charlie Chaplin, James combines biography, criticism and memoir in a wide-ranging meditation on modern culture and ideas.
Cultural Amnesia; Necessary Memories from the History and the Arts, by Clive James.
Published by W.W. Norton & Company, New York and London. Printed in the USA. First edition. Signed by Clive James directly to the title page.
A fine hardback with black spine and white boards with gilt 'lightbulb' design to cover and gilt titles to spine. With dustjacket, now housed in clear, protective, removable plastic.
Text is in fine condition throughout.
Text in English.
The book examines the lives and ideas of a remarkable range of writers, artists, philosophers, musicians and political figures, including Anna Akhmatova, Peter Altenberg, Louis Armstrong, Raymond Aron, Walter Benjamin, Marc Bloch, Jorge Luis Borges, Robert Brasillach, Thomas Browne, Albert Camus, Dick Cavett, Paul Celan, Chamfort, Coco Chanel, Charlie Chaplin, Nirad C. Chaudhuri, G. K. Chesterton, Jean Cocteau, Gianfranco Contini, Benedetto Croce, Tony Curtis, Ernst Robert Curtius, Miles Davis, Sergei Diaghilev, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Alfred Einstein, Duke Ellington, Federico Fellini, W. C. Fields, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gustave Flaubert, Sigmund Freud, Egon Friedell, François Furet, Charles de Gaulle, Edward Gibbon, Terry Gilliam, Joseph Goebbels, Witold Gombrowicz, William Hazlitt, G. W. F. Hegel, Heinrich Heine, Adolf Hitler, Ricarda Huch, Ernst Jünger, Franz Kafka, John Keats, Leszek Kołakowski, Alexandra Kollontai, Heda Margolius Kovály, Karl Kraus, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Norman Mailer, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Golo Mann, Heinrich Mann, Michael Mann, Thomas Mann, Mao Zedong, Chris Marker, John McCloy, Zinka Milanov, Czesław Miłosz, Eugenio Montale, Montesquieu, Alan Moorehead, Paul Muratov, Lewis Namier, Grigory Ordzhonikidze, Octavio Paz, Alfred Polgar, Beatrix Potter, Jean Prévost, Marcel Proust, Edgar Quinet, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Jean-François Revel, Richard Rhodes, Rainer Maria Rilke, Virginio Rognoni, Ernesto Sabato, Edward Said, Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, José Saramago, Jean-Paul Sartre, Erik Satie, Arthur Schnitzler, Sophie Scholl, Wolf Jobst Siedler, Manès Sperber, Tacitus, Margaret Thatcher, Henning von Tresckow, Leon Trotsky, Karl Tschuppik, Dubravka Ugrešić, Miguel de Unamuno, Pedro Henríquez Ureña, Paul Valéry, Mario Vargas Llosa, Evelyn Waugh, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Isoroku Yamamoto, Aleksandr Zinoviev, Carl Zuckmayer and Stefan Zweig.
xxxii + (1) + 876pp.
Dimensions: Approximately 243mm high x 165mm wide x 50mm deep.
Weight approximately 1.3kg (unpacked).