Charles Charming's Challenges on the Pathway to the Throne [Paperback]

Clive James (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Jonathan Cape (1981)
• ASIN: B000OOMIS4
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

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1.0 out of 5 stars Whole countries are delighted to stay unloyal, January 22, 2005

By 

Gooch McCracken (c/o your haunted slab of Velveeta) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Charles Charming's Challenges on the Pathway to the Throne (Hardcover)

What a pathetic embarrassment. Clive's sycophancy toward the subject-matter is bad enough. But I also begrudge Clive for straitjacketing himself with rhymes. I'm just not interested in sound effects, thank you very much. Although I did enjoy the obligatory joke about David Frost's gusharrhea: "Fantastic, amazing, super, marvellous, what a show, good evening, welcome, fabulous, hello." And I was impressed by the following Larkinian metaphor: "The rain fell softly into London like the grain of some old photograph in black and white." But then, on the other hand, you've got The Prince Of Wales lapsing into Goonspeak and duly impressing his Welsh-language teachers.

I'm achingly grateful to Paul Theroux for having thumped Clive's "slurping poetic tribute" in the following manner: "It is not true that all bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. Look at this book, for example. It is about as awful, as lame and as lifeless as can be, and yet it clearly springs from spurious feeling, self-boosting facetiousness and cack-handed social climbing which, in Clive James's couplets, turn into fawning mockery, as he hitches his trundling wagon of assorted poetic styles to the Royal Coach in the hope of someone catching sight of his bumpy head and inefficient eyes, so he can wave hello in his own way."