Cultural Amnesia
Echoing Edward Said's belief that "Western humanism is not enough, we need a universal humanism," renowned critic Clive James presents here his life's work. Containing over one hundred original essays, organized by quotations from A to Z, this book illuminates, rescues, or occasionally destroys the careers of many of the greatest thinkers, humanists, musicians, artists, and philosophers of the twentieth century. In discussing, among others, Louis Armstrong, Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, James writes, "If the humanism that makes civilization civilized is to be preserved into the new century, it will need advocates. These advocates will need a memory, and part of that memory will need to be of an age in which they were not yet alive." This is the book to burnish these memories of a Western civilization that James fears is nearly lost.--From publisher description.
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4recommend
10mentions
5people
2013–2022years
60% recommend40% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Clive James wrote a book — Cultural Amnesia — that comes at this concept from a slightly different angle, but still very interesting.
- Clive James' website is and will (I believe) remain up. https://www.clivejames.com/ Definitely worth a visit. Try video/talking in the library for a load of fascinating interviews.
His book 'Cultural Amnesia' is a marvellous cultural review to stimulate, annoy and delight most readers.
- Clive James has an interesting essay on Mann in Cultural Amnesia.
- I'll give you my favourite quote:
Ich höre Geräusche, die Andere nicht hören, und sie stören mir die Musik der Sphären - die Andere auch nicht hören.
I hear noises which others don't hear, and they distract me from the music of the spheres - which others also don't hear.
That is Kraus' alter ego speaking, in the context of the Great War and jingoism in Austria-Hungary, which the play satirizes.
If you want an intro, Clive James has an essay in Cultural Amnesia, which is a great book in its own right.
- Can thoroughly recommend his 'Cultural Amnesia' with its highly eclectic collection of thoughts on almost 100 people as disparate as Louis Armstrong, Terry Gilliam, Hitler, Mao, Kafka, Fellini, Beatrix Potter, Sartre, Tacitus, Thatcher, Wittgenstein and Stefan Zweig.
- Tl;dr, have to get to work. But
a. For a cooler look at Karl Kraus, check out the essay on him in Clive James's Cultural Amnesia. b. The PC/Mac/whatever bit is tedious and silly. c. Comparing the US to the Austro-Hungarian empire is also silly. One might stipulate that we comprise wildly different cultures also; but that would require that one skip the "Roman Catholic empire" bit and notice that the empire had quantities of Protestants, Orthodox, Jews, and Muslims.
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