Non Fiction Favourite: "Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time" by Clive James

Cultural Amnesia is an anthology of over 100 essays about people of note in the 20th century. The essays cover writers, artists, actors, political thinkers and politicians. One of my favourite things about this book is the "Overture" at the very beginning which is about early 20th century Vienna. It really sets the tone and the loose theme of the rest of the essays and is incredibly interesting. The essays themselves tend to focus on one or two themes within the subjects' lives rather than just working as biographical essays. This is a real asset to the book which engages the reader fully and allows to you think, question and challenge rather than just blankly reading facts. In the age of Wikipedia (which I do love) where the facts of someone's life are more than just accessible biographies like these are all the more valuable.

One of the great things about a book like this is that you don't have to read all essays at once but you can dip your toe in every now and again. I don't think that I have read all the essays though I've had the book for more than a couple of years. I have great respect for a piece of work like this not only because of the amount of time and effort that would have gone into making it (James himself notes that it has "taken him forty years" to write) but also because it works as an educational work. For example, before opening this book I had never hear of Ann Akhmatova, a woman who wrote so beautifully through such an ugly time. She has since become one of my favourite poets.

Some of my favourite essays are on Akhmatova, Jorge Luis Borge, Albert Camus, Coco Chanel, Jean Cocteau, Albert Einstein, Federico Fellini, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gustave Flaubert, Josef Goebbels, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Mao Zedong, Marcel Proust, Leon Trotsky, and Evelyn Waugh.

Bonus: If you like biographies on your favourite authors I thoroughly recommend Wild Nights! by Joyce Carol Oats. The book contains fictional re-tellings of the last days of famous writers and each individual story mimics the tone and style of the subject writer. The Emily Dickinson story is my personal favourite and not exatctly what you would expect...

Have you read parts of Cultural Amnesia? What are some of your favourite essays? Feel free to let me know in the comments!

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Lots of Love,
xoxo

*this post was not sponsored, all opinions are my own. Above image is not mine, sourced from here.