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A review by sebastian_porta
Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts by Clive James
4.0
This is a collection of essays about personalities and figures who gave a face to the 20th century according to the author or, at least, will provide us a historical glance into a tumultuous century molded by the two great wars, the battle of ideologies during the cold war, totalitarianism and the triumph of capitalism and the countercultural answer. From writers and poets like Anna Akhmatova, Camus, Borges, Fitzgerald, Kafka or Thomas Mann; jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington or Miles Davis; filmmakers like Charles Chaplin, Fellini and Jean Cocteau; political leaders like Mao Zedong, Margaret Thatcher, Trotsky or Hitler to less well-known figures like Egon Friedell, Walter Benjamin, Edward Said or Raymond Aron.
Not written without humor and wit, Clive James' prose is entertaining to read as it is insightful and clever in his observations and his encyclopedic knowledge of the last century. It's not an easy task to summarize such a complex and convulsive period and Clive James is certainly far to give us a complete and finished picture, that was not what he intended, but rather to approach the reader to the 20th century through a collection of different names, most of them seemingly unrelated to each other, but deep down connected to the forces of history, even up to our days.
Not written without humor and wit, Clive James' prose is entertaining to read as it is insightful and clever in his observations and his encyclopedic knowledge of the last century. It's not an easy task to summarize such a complex and convulsive period and Clive James is certainly far to give us a complete and finished picture, that was not what he intended, but rather to approach the reader to the 20th century through a collection of different names, most of them seemingly unrelated to each other, but deep down connected to the forces of history, even up to our days.