From Publishers Weekly
Over the course of almost 50 essays, cultural pundit James only occasionally wears out his welcome, and very infrequently misses his mark. Four essays on Philip Larkin cover much the same ground, a piece on Twain, when it tries to rope in Vietnam and Kissinger, seems dated. Most often, however, James is either insightful (a study of Orwell) or else entertaining (a dismantling of Judith Krantz), and quite often he's both. Essays dealing with poetry and literature feature pieces on Robert Lowell, D.H. Lawrence, and Solzhenitsyn, while a section on culture and criticism comments on the life and works of Lillian Hellman, Evelyn Waugh and Betrand Russell. An additional pleasure are the postscripts where James comments on and provides explanations of (and sometimes excuses for) the ideas contained in these previously published essays. Through these illuminating and entertaining notes, the reader is given a kind of bifocal view, first through the myopic range of the original topic and then the wider view of James's critical hindsight. For instance, commenting on an essay on Auden, James writes, "The word `immediately' is used twice, which is twice too often...." It would be wrong to say that these afterthoughts are more enjoyable than the essays they comment on, but in many places, James's thoughts on his own thoughts are as penetrating as the thesis that sent his critical imagination wandering in the first place. A broad companion to Even as We Speak: New Essays 1993-2000 (which came out in paper last September), this latest collection acts as a prism through which to view James's entire career. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
What qualities make a critic's work worth reading long after the newspaper or magazine in which it first appeared has been pulped? Style, of course, and a firm grasp not only of the particulars of a book or film but also of the wider world in which it is created and absorbed. Australian-born and Cambridge-educated, James writes with fluent wit, remarkable warmth, deep knowledge, and an exhilarating sense of mission. His discussions of Ezra Pound, Galway Kinnell, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Raymond Chandler, Mark Twain, and James Agee are startlingly illuminating; his take on Australian literature is invigorating and enlightening; and his response to Judith Krantz is absolutely hilarious. And within each finely choreographed critique shimmer such striking observations as "a culture can never flourish as a hedge against the world. It isn't a bastion for nationalism, it is an international passport." James is also a poet, novelist, memoirist, lyricist, and television performer, practices that contribute mightily to the grace and magnetism of his essays. The timelessness, acuity, and humanism of James' criticism is everywhere evident in this scintillating collection. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Washington Post Book World, James Campbell, 22 June 2003
Literary Criticism has repeatedly been declared defunct. Yet the appearance of this hefty volume affirms that...it continues to matter.


John Bayley
Clive James is in the tradition of Hazlitt, Bagehot, and Edmund Wilson, with a gusto to succeed theirs.


Anthony Burgess
Clive James is the funniest man we have.


Vanity Fair, June 2003
[H]arnesses the essential essays of literary critic Clive James.


Booklist, Donna Seaman, 1 June 2003
The timelessness, acuity, and humanism of James' criticism is everywhere evident in this scintillating collection.


Boston Globe, William H. Pritchard, 3 August 2003
James has selected well from his immense horde so as to make the 'essential' claim not merely boastful.


Buffalo News, Jeff Simon, 29 July 2003
One of the great living critics and essayists....all praise.


Los Angeles Times Book Review, Lee Siegel, author of Love and Other Games of Chance, 22 June 2003
James is essential for American readers.


New Criterion, Brooke Allen, 1 June 2003
The forty-seven pieces presented here...are of a remarkably high level and might without undue hyperbole be called essential.


New York Sun, Adam Kirsch, 25 June 2003
Delightful....Clive James [is] one of those critics who really does serve civilization.


Book Description
It is impossible not to be awed by the remarkable range and massive erudition of Clive James, one of the greatest literary critics of our age. In the tradition of Edmund Wilson, James is a brilliant stylist so perceptive (and funny) that he renders the twisted literary terrain of the twentieth century remarkably accessible. In As of This Writing James has assembled his most ambitious and expansive collection to date, a book that features forty-nine essays on poetry, film, culture, and fiction written between 1967 and 2001. Whether commenting on poets like Auden or Jarrell, novelists like D. H. Lawrence and James Agee (not to mention Judith Krantz), or filmmakers like Fellini or Bogdanovich, James delights his readers with his manic energy and critical aplomb. This volume is a literary education that few recent books can rival.


About the Author
Clive James is the author of more than twenty books of criticism, autobiography, and travel writing. His criticism has appeared in The New Yorker. He lives in London.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

It is Impossible not to be impressed by the remarkable range and erudition of the irrepressible, intellectually voracious, Australian-born critic Clive James. As of This Writing is James's most ambitious and expansive work to date, a book that features forty-nine penetrating essays on poetry, film, fiction, and criticism, presenting the most comprehensive view of his writings between 1968 and 2002. In the tradition of Edmund Wilson -- himself the subject of the author's most famous early work, included here -- James has throughout his career sought to be a "Metropolitan Critic," to "operate in the vital space between the hack reviewers of the periodicals and the dust contractors of the universities." Rather than shunning popular tastes, James has sought to mold them. Whether in the pages of The New Yorker, the Times Literary Supplement, or the New Yorker, Review of Books, James has written as lucidly and intelligently about daytime television, Marilyn Monroe, and lurid romance novels (see "A Blizzard of Tiny Kisses") as about poetry, fiction, history, and philosophy. Moreover, James is a brilliant stylist, so perceptive (and trenchantly funny) that he often renders the twisted cultural terrain of the twentieth century far more accessible than it is generally portrayed elsewhere. Whether commenting on poets like Seamus Heaney and Randall Jarrell, novelists like D. H. Lawrence and James Agee, or filmmakers like Fellini and Bogdanovich, James delights his readers with a wide-ranging energy and critical aplomb, not to mention a literary education that few can rival.

Separated into four sections -- "Poetry," "Fiction and Literature," "Culture and Criticism," and "Visual Images" -- As of This Writing is the best introduction to James's massive body of work, a book that will give the intrepid reader a thorough cultural education in one volume. Spanning the entire range of his career, it includes, with additional notes by the author, classic essays like "Nabokov's Grand Folly" and "On Auden's Death" as well as recent pieces such as "Les Murray's Master Spirits" and "Primo Levi's Last Will and Testament." This is the definitive collection of writings by one of the greatest literary critics of our age.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

At his best [James] combines the most potent attributes of what Philip Rahv called redskin and paleface writers, managing to be street smart and scholarly, swaggering and cerebral, all at the same time. Like John Updike he's adept at using his gift for metaphor and pictorial language to delineate the work of others. And like Martin Amis he's equally at home with the high and the low, a cultural magpie eloquent on the arcane and the vernacular, on the allusive poetry of Galway Kinnell and the sexual drivel of Judith Krantz. — Michiku Kakutani

The Los Angeles Times

James has nothing to be anxious or defensive about, which becomes clear in As of This Writing, a far-flung collection of his works. So acute is his aesthetic and intellectual accuracy that even when you feel his opinions are "wrong," you feel that his sensibility is right. — Lee Siegel

The Washington Post

Literary criticism has repeatedly been declared defunct. Yet the appearance of this hefty collection affirms that, even if it is not always "essential," it continues to matter. — James Campbell

Anthony Burgess

Clive James is the funniest man we have.

John Bayley