miniZibaldone

You’ve said that at both the University of Sydney and the University of Cambridge, you were “a bad student” who consistently read off-course. To the ears of my  contemporaries, reading off-course is the sort of procrastination that qualifies being a good student. Now, with the internet, we have so many distractions that is  almost impossible to stay focused on any one thing at a time, and work is scarcely one of them. Do you worry about the future of literature in this virtual  environment? Literature will win through the way it always has, by being too valuable to be ignored. All you have to do is write something as good as  Pride and Prejudice . A  cinch. Finally, do you have any advice for young writers? When the young writers ask me for advice, I give them the same advice as I give my niece: stop right now if you can. The Meaning of Recognition by Clive James Flying Visits Clive James

You’ve said that at both the University of Sydney and the University of Cambridge, you were “a bad student” who consistently read off-course. To the ears of my  contemporaries, reading off-course is the sort of procrastination that qualifies being a good student. Now, with the internet, we have so many distractions that is  almost impossible to stay focused on any one thing at a time, and work is scarcely one of them. Do you worry about the future of literature in this virtual  environment? Literature will win through the way it always has, by being too valuable to be ignored. All you have to do is write something as good as Pride and Prejudice . A  cinch. Finally, do you have any advice for young writers? When the young writers ask me for advice, I give them the same advice as I give my niece: stop right now if you can.

Flying Visits Clive James Postcard from Japan: 1 An Exchange of Views By courtesy of a British Airways Boeing 707 I was crossing in a few hours the same distance that cost Marco Polo years of his life, but the speed of modern travel has its penalties. Among these had been the in-flight movie, which I dimly remember was about bears playing baseball. From the air Siberia looks like cold nothing. The Sea of Japan looks like wet nothing. But Japan itself, at your first glimpse of it, looks like something. Even geographically it’s a busy place. Immediately you are impressed by the wealth of detail – an impression that will never leave you for as long as you are there. Only a tenth of the land is useful for anything. The remaining nine-tenths, when you look down on it, is a kind of corduroy velvet: country so precipitously convoluted that the rivers flowing through it look like the silver trails of inebriated slugs. The useful tenth is inhabited, cultivated and indus...

Notebooks, 1935-1942 (Volume 1) Albert Camus Notebooks, 1942-1951 (Volume 2) Albert Camus  Notebooks, 1951-1959 (Volume 3) Albert Camus  Neither Victims nor Executioners: An Ethic Superior to Murder Albert Camus Loving the Church Raniero Cantalamessa  The World Beyond Your Head Matthew Crawford  If I Live to be 100 Neenah Ellis  Interview with History Oriana Fallaci  The Rage and the Pride Oriana Fallaci  Zibaldone Giacomo Leopadri  The Sound and the Story Thomas Looker  Putnam Camp: Sigmund Freud and James Putnam an the Purpose of American Psychology George Prochnik  Pavel Florensky: A Quiet Genius Avril Pyman  The Waverley Novels: The Betrothed Sir Walter Scott  Consilience Edward Wilson    Flying Visits Clive James

Holidays in Hell by P. J. O'Rourke The Numerati by Stephen Baker   The China Price by Alexandra Harney   The Meaning of Recognition by Clive James The Culture of Narcissism by Christopher Lasch Bad Religion by Ross Douthat The Servile State by Hilaire Belloc Religions for Peace by Francis Arinze

The Numerati by Stephen Baker   American Slang by Robert Chapman   Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl   Robert Musil and the NonModern by Mark Freed   Levinas and Lacan: The Missed Encounter by Sarah Harasym   The China Price by Alexandra Harney   The Meaning of Recognition by Clive James