Cultural amnesia : necessary memories from history and the arts

Author / Creator

James, Clive, 1939-2019 author

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Summary

"Nearly forty years in the making, Cultural Amnesia is the work of a lifetime. It is both an enlightening and a despairing work, written by one of the world's most renowned critics. Cultural Amnesi...

"Nearly forty years in the making, Cultural Amnesia is the work of a lifetime. It is both an enlightening and a despairing work, written by one of the world's most renowned critics. Cultural Amnesia can be viewed simply as an extraordinary encyclopedia, containing over one hundred essays, all of them never before published, and arranged from A to Z around celebrities, intellectuals, tyrants, and writers, whose apothegms have fascinated James throughout his adult life. The reader can plunge in and read from beginning to end or simply decide to browse, and choose to read a piece at night before bed, or in the library, or alone in a cafe, which is where James always hoped these reflections might first be imbibed." "On a more profound level, Cultural Amnesia functions far beyond any mere reference guide. Indeed, every one of its many essays was written especially to fit with all the others in a vast verbal mosaic of the mental life of modern times, the area where politics and culture meet. James illuminates, rescues, or occasionally demolishes the careers of many of the greatest thinkers, humanists, musicians, artists, and philosophers of the twentieth century. And in quoting them he shows why they should be remembered and why cultural amnesia is a continuing danger."--BOOK JACKET.

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