Unreliable Memoirs (Unreliable Memoirs, 1)

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James, Clive (16 February 2007). "The name-changing fidgets". BBC News Magazine . Retrieved 24 December 2007. He described the voice of Greek singer Demis Roussos of "having the sound of a Chihuahua caught in a revolving Dalmatian". His real name was Warrant Officer First Class Ronald McDonald, but he was known throughout the army as Ronnie the One. Responsible for battalion discipline, he had powers of life and death over all non-commissioned personnel and could even bring charges against officers up to the rank of Captain. . . . It was because he was always screaming so hard. At that moment he was screaming directly at me. 'GED-YAHAHCARD!' Later on a translator told me that this mean (sic) 'Get your hair cut' and could generally be taken as a friendly greeting, especially if you could still see his eyes. . . . (pp. 143-44)

Unreliable Memoirs Series by Clive James - Goodreads

The book moves ahead by leaps and bounds, bravuras and exaggerations, and, as it admits, lies of a sort. When the infant satirist is nearly drowned at the bottom of the garden, where his tunnels were to be located, we get the following legend or saga: When Mary Beard Met Clive James". Front Row Late. 21 December 2018. BBC . Retrieved 1 March 2020. ( Currently unavailable). Clive James has always seemed a man unsure whether he was a serious academic or a wannabe comedian. These recollections of childhood through school and university in mid-Century Australia reveal the dilemma in embryo. Veitch, Harriet (28 November 2019). "Clive James: Literary and TV giant dead at 80". Sydney Morning Herald . Retrieved 31 October 2021.I still get so impatient with the whole time-consuming business of covering up exposed skin that I will buy the first thing that catches my eye, and that when it comes to shoes the first thing that catches your eye is the last thing you should ever put on your feet.” James was a fan of the St George Dragons and wrote admiringly of Rugby League Immortal Reg Gasnier who was a schoolmate at Sydney Technical High School. [75] He guest presented one episode of The Footy Show in 2005. [76] Health and death [ edit ] With his trademark humour and self-deprecating style, Clive James proves a hugely entertaining and erudite guide to his own remarkable life. He described Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his bodybuilding days, as looking like "a brown condom full of walnuts". [47]

Unreliable Memoirs by Clive James | Goodreads

James grew up in outer suburban Sydney, where he seems to have perpetrated a series of atrocities against neighbours and his long suffering mother. This is the world of boys growing up in Australia in the 1940s and 50s, roaming free, forming gangs (Clive seems to have led all the pranks), experimenting with sex. And fail at most of the things you try. No, fail at all of them. The Victorian critic John Churton Collins said, "The secret of success in life is known only to those who have not succeeded." And Collins would know. His entry in The Cambridge Guide to Literature in Englishends, "Morbidly interested in murder, spiritualism and graveyards, and depressive in temperament, he drowned himself near Lowestoft." Clive is the best-read person I've ever known. He's read it all, often in its original language, no matter if the language is as unwonted as Russian or Japanese. Once, before the dawn of Google, I asked Clive for the source of a bit of Ring Lardner dialogue that I wanted to use in a travel article. I couldn't find the quotation in my, I thought, complete set of Lardner. It's one thing to know that a favourite commentator, reviewer and poet is going to die, the announcement of Clive James' illness coming many years ago now, and yet another to get the news that the inevitable has happened. We lost an intelligent, wry, acerbic, deeply thoughtful person from this earth when he died, in what seems inevitable timing for these things - just when you felt we needed him most.The Complete Unreliable Memoirs: Volume One collects the first three books of autobiography from Clive James: Unreliable Memoirs, Falling Towards England, and May Week Was In June. This is a memoir by Clive James, so obviously Clive James figures prominently but to me there seems to be too much information about Clive James and too little about the time and place and people other than those who have a direct bearing on Clive James. For me he doesn’t successfully evoke Australia during and after the second world war. I would have liked to hear more about his mother, the rest of the family and Australian society as a whole. The pace of his storytelling here is relentless, stories all told the same, voice and textures all the way through. Achieving a humourous tone is his main aim, but as the devices he uses are exaggeration, cruelty and humiliation, delivered as a series of hammer blows, it gets a bit wearing. He was also a patron of the Burma Campaign UK, an organisation that campaigns for human rights and democracy in Burma. [66] Personal life [ edit ]