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HE’S NO LOEWENSTEIN
Sydney-born writer Clive James, a friend of this site, is shunned by the Sydney Writers’ Festival. Possibly he isn’t well-known enough, or is published too infrequently.
UPDATE. Mark Steyn, another unlikely to appear among Sydney’s festering community, relives August in Australia.
How can you omit someone from Kogarah?
Rugby League player; working class boy made good - how could they not omit him?
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2007 08 26 at 02:55 AM • permalinkClive James has never declared himself a HoWARd hater, that’s the problem.
Hypocrites, aren’t they? They agree with freedom of speech, as long as the ideas expressed are theirs.
Don’t know about other writer’s festivals, but the one in Sydney has become a joke. It’s not taken seriously any more but seen as yet another occasion for the members of the Left to strut their stuff in front of the like-minded. Some of them actually happen to be writers ...
If he attended, James would merely give the Sydney Writers’s Festival credibility that it doesn’t deserve.
Posted by daddy dave on 2007 08 26 at 03:07 AM • permalinkThe Left is at its most formidable when it is trying to destroy something worthwhile. It is at its weakest when it has succeeded. Because the Left doesn’t debate it never adapts and never progresses.
So the left, through its agencies such as the education system, Fairfax media and the ABC, is odds on to succeed in bringing down the most economically successful government Australia has ever seen. But then what? What future for a country run by the likes of Manne, Marr and Burnside? None of them could run a fish and chip shop in Ipswich, let alone something difficult.
#13 Thanks, 1.618. I nearly choked on my water at that hahhahaha.
I’d love a free drink and leg wax, though.
Clive James rocks, and I’d fly up for a Sydney Righter’s Festival.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2007 08 26 at 03:37 AM • permalinkClive gave a genial, lucid, and entertaining performance this morning in conversation with Peter Craven/Jason Steger at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, on top of his other appearances (most noteably as the key-note speaker). Sydney Writers Festival have really shot themselves in the foot with this one.
11 - German Grease. I tip my hat to that one.
1.618xxxPosted by SwinishCapitalist on 2007 08 26 at 04:18 AM • permalink#9 I suspect you will find that Helen is would rather be caught dead before lurking with the than the average denizen of the Sydney Writers Festival.
She is pretty cool, actually. After all, the kerfluffle caused by her original book was all because Robert Manne made a fool of himself, and took it out on her. Anyone that makes RM look stupid is alright in my book.
The Australian left is one of the world’s most provincial and intolerant. What’s outside the pink bubble cannot be deemed to exist.
James is a brillant critic and poet. His last two books were terrific - ‘The Meaning of Recognition’ and ‘Cultural Amnesia’. Don’t let the titles put you off; James’ prose has Aussie directness and humour and plenty of the smarts too. Like Les Murray, a poet up there with Woolcott and Heaney, he has decided he might do a little thinking for himself. Funny that.
He’s a bloke with too generous a mind for these sour groupthink weenies and their hyperbolic bulldust.
Famously described Arnold Schwarzenegger as ‘a condom filled with walnuts’.
OT, but how does a story about Howard’s family life have a third of the story containing Rudd’s quotes?
Does anybody know how many taxpayer $$$s go into this crap? I believe the Imperial City…apart from the freak show calling itself the ACT government, not the worst place to live…..has got one as well.
Expect that will finish with a midnight visit to ANZAC Ave, where ‘writers” will piss on the Memorials, maybe spray a little paint, rounded out next day by a mass obsequiance at the grassby statue.
#27; As a Californian, a little sensitive about Arnold. I voted for him in the recall against Gray Davis. For these reasons. Arnold can be whatever, but when Davis said we must double or triple the car taxes, Arnold can be be condom filled with bowling balls for all I care.
Posted by dean martin on 2007 08 26 at 05:58 AM • permalinkMark Steyn:
But it was a great month for me. I was very touched to be warmly greeted by so many Australians, from His Excellency the Governor-General all the way up to His Excellency the Tim of Blair.
If we vote in a republic, does that mean Tim Blair will be our first president?
I trust the blairites will be given suitable roles befitting their loyalty!
Clive James would be welcome at Casa Pedro for a cool drink or a snag off the barby anytime.
He might be a Pommy bastard, but he is a clever and funny Pommy bastard.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2007 08 26 at 09:20 AM • permalinkWhy does the “Left” hate Clive James? Apart from the fact he has an enormous intellect, an independent mind and is as sharp and incisive as a scalpel?
He doesn’t hate America. He doesn’t hate the UK or Australia. He doesn’t think freely elected democratic politicians are “fascists”. He’s not too big on the real fascists. And worst of all he doesn’t hate Israel and the Jews.
Of course they hate him.
As compensation, CJ will have a sold-out national tour. I was quick and I have first row tickets in Canberra.
BTW, CJ is really a brilliant writer, I’d recommend his volumes of autobiography; funny, witty, incisive, a joy to read…Posted by Honkie Hammer on 2007 08 26 at 07:14 PM • permalinkWhatever his notions of economics (and I note that whatever his support for socialism and government economic planning, James had no problem calling the UK establishment on some of its more egregious economic blunders back in the day), his prose is written with a lapidary precision that is a lesson in itself for aspiring and professional writers alike: reason enough right there for the Sydney crowd to shun him, I suppose…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 08 26 at 10:42 PM • permalinkI have not read it for a few years, but “Unreliable Memoirs” is among the best autos ever written. The passage recounting home made billy cart races and the inevitable calamity brings tears to the eyes.
Trying to imagine the difficulties faced by millions of families coping with dad and hubby away at war is one thing, but then finding that dad and hubby will never return makes tears flow.
Well done Clive’s mum and those of her ilk. Then and now.
A soldier sacrifices his life in an instant, but the sacrifice of a war widow takes a lifetime.
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Clive James’ blog hasn’t been updated in months. Yet he probably still gets more hits than Loewenstein…