North Face of Soho (Unreliable Memoirs) [Hardcover]

Clive James (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0330481282 | ISBN-13: 978-0330481281 | Edition: First Edition

After "Unreliable Memoirs", "Falling Towards England" and "May Week Was in June" comes the next instalment in the ongoing saga that is Clive James's life. His fourth - and eagerly awaited - volume of autobiography promises to be every bit as eventful, entertaining, engrossing and honest as the previous three. At the very end of "May Week Was in June", we left our hero sitting beside the River Cam one beautiful 1968 spring day, jotting down his thoughts in a journal. Newly married and about to leave the cloistered world of Cambridge academia for the racier, glossier life promised by Literary London, he was, so he informed his journal, reasonably satisfied. With his criticism beginning to appear in magazines and newspapers such as the "New Statesman", and his poetry published in Carcanet, as well as a play then being performed to rave reviews at the Arts Theatre, James had good reason to be content. But what happened next? This is the question posed, and answered by, North Face of Soho. Intelligent, amusing and provocative - the words apply to the man himself as much as his memoirs - it's a book that can't come soon enough for the legions of Clive James fans worldwide. "His proses mixes together cleverness and clownishness, and achieves a fluency and a level of wit that makes his pages truly shimmer." - "Financial Times."

Editorial Reviews

Review

"'His proses mixes together cleverness and clownishness, and achieves a fluency and a level of wit that makes his pages truly shimmer' Financial Times" --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

From the Back Cover

‘The best an entertainer can hope to do, when writing about what he does (and nobody asks him to do that: he decides to do it for his own reasons), is to be instructive. As a consequence, this book will be full of homilies about what to avoid. These homilies are sincerely meant, but with one proviso, which I hope is a saving grace: if I myself had avoided all these things, I would probably have got nothing done at all, because the errors were essential. There is hope, therefore, that young people contemplating a career in the arts and the media might find guidance here, and those less young people who have run into difficulties might find consolation. For readers leading normal, and therefore more important, lives, there might also be the consolation of any evidence I can offer that those of us who have been granted a disproportionate ability to express ourselves may not always have the best selves to express. I hope to get all the way to my grave without committing any major crimes, but within the limits of the law there are very few human failings that I have not embodied. Some of them I can’t specify without embarrassing other people. But if I did not embarrass myself, this book would be too far short of the truth to repay reading, or to be worth writing. The older I get, the more time I spend wishing I had done things differently. I wish that could be different, but there you go.’

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 264 pages
• Publisher: Picador; First Edition edition (October 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0330481282
• ISBN-13: 978-0330481281
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,810,885 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed, December 7, 2006

By 

mg69 (Melbourne) - See all my reviews

This review is from: North Face of Soho (Unreliable Memoirs) (Hardcover)

I approached the book with anticipation, having enjoyed "Unreliable Memoirs" (Volume One).This latest volume, which brings us up to James' post-Cambridge early career, is unbelievably tedious: solipsistic, self-absorbed, full of endless references to literary editors, TV producers, buddies from the London literary world - most of whom no-one has ever heard of, though the big names, like Martin Amis, get grovelling accolades. James tries to justify his frantic, over-achieving persona by suggesting that he is presenting a cautionary tale from which the willing reader can learn. Don't believe it. The book is unutterably boring, lacking the verbal wit we once enjoyed from this former media celebrity. He should have quit while he was ahead with the fatherless little boy from Kogarah riding his billycart down that hill.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Reliable James, February 26, 2007

By 

J. P. Ivins (Perth, Western Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: North Face of Soho (Unreliable Memoirs) (Hardcover)

It's a decade since I read the first instalment of these Memoirs but the contrast effect is strong nevertheless. I remember the first book was funny and well written but I don't remember it having much point. In fact that was the point: "...someone who had done nothing writing a book about how he had prepared himself for not doing it...". Reading the fourth volume is like being given sound advice from a much admired uncle: try to learn from your mistakes so you can do better next time. James illustrates this theme by stuffing up over and over again while his career somehow manages to assemble itself around him. Eventually he even manages to learn from his mistakes. There are dull moments, or at least moments that are dull if you neglected to have a literary career in London during the 1970s, but these are easy to plough through because you know it won't be long before Martin Amis walks into the next pub. On the whole I smiled a lot. Sometimes I laughed loud enough to frighten the chooks, and I cried on the last page right on cue. One thing I didn't do was put it down.