Who really lost the Culture Wars!
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22 Comments
Masterpiece !
Tawdry frogmouth ?
‘Falling Towards England’ is certainly Clive’s worst of the now 5 memoirs. You do realise that Germaine is mentioned in the first and second volumes (i.e. ‘Unreliable Memoirs’ and ‘Falling towards England’)?
Damn Clive James!
Sorry, … that’s Dame Clive James.
I remember your mum from the cartoon about your schooling, where she passed you in Sexism Studies and Art. She looked lovely and obviously taught you well.
Chicks rule, but they’re not good at wars.
Love the Louis as a can of Pink Button!!! How appropriate - say where do you buy that ? LOL
Dogonauts, this raises a grave (!) question: which book would you LEAST like to kill you off?
Deccles, I agree. I never finished “Falling Towards England” - which is probably why I’m still amongst the quick.
Denise M - it’s risky, but War and Peace would be right up there in my leasted-desired killers.
That’s an easy one Denise.
Opal Sunset: Selected Poems by Clive James.
Is there a book titled ‘The Ponderings of Senator Steve Fielding’? That would be my pick.
I presumably won’t have a say in which book despatches me, but I suspect the one most likely is the copy of Proust’s ‘In search of lost time’ that languishes next to the bed with a bookmark less than a quarter of the way through.
I fear it will eventually lose patience and smother me in my sleep.
I had a pretty wretched childhood and you’ve caught the over-all terror of one’s mum walking out to perfection.
All the same, a tree-climbing Dog Mum? That’s cool.
Denise: Ulysses: James Joyce. When I was young everything was banned. So I solemnly ploughed through it to get to the sex part, only to find that the author had deleted all the spaces between the words, which to a fourteen year old was boring! I’ve never quite forgiven Joyce for that little effort.
Love Greer as a tawny frogmouth…
There’s a series of books by Jasper Fforde, featuring heroine Thursday Next…one of the characters is cursed (or something) in that they cannot die until they have read the 10 most boring books in the world. I can’t remember the top 10, but I’m pretty sure ‘Ivanhoe’ and ‘Moby Dick’ were in there.
I personally am with Venise on Ulysses. I only made it to about page 340. I decided it was not very likely that Zombie Dignam was going to turn up any time soon and quit it for a book with more explosions.
I grew up being told they were Tawny Frogmouth Owls, but it turns out that they are not owls. The characterisation of Germaine as the Australian equivalent of the wise old owl (with attitude), seems quite appropriate.
Oddly, while I read a lot of feminism in my 20’s, I never read “The Female Eunich”. “Dammed Whores and God’s Police” by Anne Summers, gave me the Australian perspective I was looking for, and I never ventured into Germaine Greer’s books, although I have appreciated much of what she has had to say in interviews over the years.
i rike
I rather think that Clive James might be the Real Thing.
That aside. A conflicted moment. The sadness of learning about Pink Buttons vs the brilliance of its use in the carton.
Cartoon rather.
I know it’s UnAustralian but ‘Eucalyptus’ is definitely among the top ten books in the world and I’m amazed it didn’t kill me.
Top ten most boring, I mean. It’s late. Ok, no, it’s 10 o’ clock, but I’m very lazy so that’s more like 2 or 3.
Denise M, I consulted BrigidBrophy’s definitive work on the subject of truly awful books - “Fifty Works of English Literature we could do without” and I’d like to change my vote to Tess of the D’Urbervilles just nudging out Moby Dick. Clive doesn’t get a mention in the top 50, possibly due to the field being limited to English Literature.
But not to completely bag out our antipodean escapee, his poem “Windows is Shutting Down” (published some years ago in the Monthly) is very clever.
Socks arrived, now I can go Doggy one on - one off.
Cut to the quick, Mike J, my teenage years were happily dominated by Thomas Hardy.
An admission to Venise & Acannon: at age 20 I attempted Ulysses but faltered at less than 100 pages.
Kangaroo by DH Lawrence. I would have been thankful to die before the end.
ROX: Oh god yes!