-
Clive James: De Profundis
Sunday Times, 19 August 2012
There are piles of books on the floor. All the paintings except a single Sidney Nolan have gone from the walls. Contracts are due to be exchanged. In Cambridge, in a house full of books, a study is being prepared. The London life of Clive James is coming to an end.
“I have to be near my doctors,” he explains.
That much is obvious. Not long ago he was a great striding Aussie bull, confidently chuckling his way through life, art and literary society. Martin Amis once told me that when asked how James liked his steak, he would reply: “Knock off its horns and wipe its arse.”
James embodied his role as an Australian interloper who annexed the London media and literary worlds in the 1960s and has, since, never stopped pouring out television and radio shows, essays, books of poetry, criticism and cultural history.
Not long ago he was a great striding Aussie bull, confidently chuckling his way through life, art and literary society.
Today he still has that curious Dalai Lama-like grin that seems to close his eyes, but the stride has been replaced by a shuffle, the bull neck by the striations and wattles of age and the confidence by a humble reliance on medical technology. There is no steak this afternoon, just tea and biscuits.
“I have about six different clinics in Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge that I have to attend. One of them is very important. I have to get immunoglobulin every 21 days to boost my immune system. Effectively it means I can’t be more than 21 days away from Addenbrooke’s,” he says.
On New Year’s Eve 2010 James realised he could not pee. He had known he had a prostate problem but he had put off having the operation. That evening he had to capitulate and checked into A&E.
“My kidneys had almost stopped, they saved my life,” he says. “The doctors had to stabilise me, I was in there for weeks. The trouble is, once you are in there you get diagnosed for everything else.”
After years of heavy smoking he knew he had COPD — emphysema as it used to be called — but the hospital also told him he had rampant CLL, chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. Chemotherapy finally controlled it, but the cancer had fried his immune system and now he can be poleaxed by the slightest “exacerbation” as the doctors call it — a cold or, as when we met last week, a fungal infection in his lungs.
The diagnoses came as a shock. Since a bout of suspected diphtheria in childhood, James had been in rude good health, scarcely knowing a day of illness.
“It was the first time I ever had to go to bed in a hospital and contemplate my own urinary tract hanging on the wall — a sort of amber Rothko,” he says. It startled him into realising how much he wanted to live.
“I had suicidal thoughts when I was young. I fancied myself as a melancholic, quite a lot of people do, it’s a fashionable thing. Anyway, all these ideas were coming to me when I was going to sleep, ideas of self-destruction. They all promptly vanished the moment I was under real threat. There was a sudden urge to live. I wanted to do more, to write more.”
It was, for a long time, not clear that he would make it. Close to death on several occasions, his intake of medication seems to have been vast and not always welcome: “They once gave me a mood stabiliser because I was getting a little ratty. I mean, the last thing you want as a writer is a mood stabiliser.”
A further catastrophe hit when earlier this year some Australian tabloid reporters unearthed an affair he had been having for eight years with Leanne Edelsten, a former model, and his personal life imploded. He has two daughters with Prue Shaw, a modern languages academic to whom he has been married for more than 40 years. At present, however, despite his failing health, he lives alone.
“My wife is very angry with me, so the situation is fluid,” he explains. “I deceived her and she’s annoyed. She is not just within her rights, she is perfectly justified and I not only understand but I admire her.”
Later he feels the need to make an almost formal statement about the matter: “I’d like to say I love my wife and family very much and I am sorry that I have behaved so badly . . . I have great respect, admiration and love for my wife and the proof of that is in the book.”
The book is Nefertiti in the Flak Tower, his latest collection of poems. It is dominated by meditations on illness and death as well as on love. At the end of the poem Book Review — a love poem to Prue — he imagines being addressed by Dante, the great Italian medieval poet:
You are the weakling and you always were.
If you would sing for glory, sing of her.He will not say they will get back together — “I’m not saying so, I don’t want to get caught presuming even one thing” — but he does say they do not plan to divorce.
He has always written poetry. This, he says, is his best book — “I have never before reached this pitch of intensity” — but it is also his darkest. Well known for his television shows, his comical memoirs and his hilarious book reviews, he has, as a writer, always been much darker than his public persona would suggest. One review that he wrote about The Incredible Hulk was included as part of an English exam. A woman who sat the exam paper recently wrote to tell him she had to be escorted from the room because she was laughing so much.
lYears ago Germaine Greer spotted something about James that was not funny: “I always write fairly doom-laden work in among the merriment because I think I was reacting to the war. Germaine spotted that I was really speaking for and about the wartime generation. I’ve always been grateful to her for that.”
His first volume of autobiography, Unreliable Memoirs, is generally regarded as one of the funniest books ever written, but there is also tragedy which, as he says, can be spotted by those “with ears to hear and eyes to see”. The tragedy struck him in 1945 when he was six. His father had survived a Japanese PoW camp and was on his way home, but was killed when his plane crashed. James was with his mother when she got the telegram.
“I understood what it did to her in one second. I understood everything. I knew she had spent all that time waiting and she could not bear it. When she collapsed I saw suffering she could not bear and it marked my life, no question.”
He was an only child, which probably made matters worse. Certainly it explains his self-destructive streak — he was once proud of being able to fill a hub cap with cigarette butts in a day.
“I was not a cautious man. I didn’t look after my physical capital,” he admits.
He hates complaining, he hates regrets. “I’m 72, that seems like a fair spin, 73 would be a fair spin or 74,” he says. “By complaining at all I am complaining too much. We are all lucky to have got here . . .” Having left Sydney for London in the early 1960s, he was seen as part of an Aussie wave that included Robert Hughes, the art critic who died this month, Greer, the comic Barry Humphries (aka housewife superstar Dame Edna Everage), the film maker Bruce Beresford and Michael Blakemore, the actor and director. But although they are all friends, they were never any kind of movement. He says they didn’t even hang out together and gives me a jokey assessment of each character — “difficult, very difficult, moody, exhausting, a handful . . .”
Making his name as a television reviewer, James became a media and literary superstar. He created a new way of writing in newspapers and no other new way has since outdated it. How does he see it all now that looking back has become almost an obligation? “Your life has turned to look you in the face”, as one of his poems ends.
“I understood everything. I knew she had spent all that time waiting and she could not bear it. When she collapsed I saw suffering she could not bear and it marked my life, no question.”
“I am a reprehensible character who needs to clean up his act. But I have already done a few things that may have justified my existence and, given time, I would do more. I don’t think I was a bad father but I was a terrible husband, much to my regret. I deserve everything that has happened to me. I want to make that clear. But I am truly proud of my daughters and they seem to put up with me.”
I can do better than that. James’s television work, brilliant as it was, has tended to blur his identity as one of the most influential writers of his time. At one level every newspaper is still packed with James wannabes, his prose tricks and tropes are imitated everywhere; at another level, the whole 1980s wave of new British fiction, especially Martin Amis, showed signs of having learnt from James. Most important was his invention of a way of writing seriously about popular culture.
He admits getting a little impatient when his “serious work gets lost in the shuffle” and I have often had the feeling lately that he feels slightly underrated. But, as he says, he doesn’t really mind being classed as “an entertainer . . . there are worse things to be called”.
Sadly all the initials the doctors have hung on him — COPD, CLL — have blocked him. He has started to do a television column in The Daily Telegraph but has managed only one small poem in the past year and he can’t quite bring himself to get going on his next volume of memoirs. “I don’t know what I am waiting for. I am not likely to feel any better than this. Perhaps once the move to Cambridge is over I will be better. It will take about a year to finish it. My daughters are helping and my wife is in financial control.”
We leave the emptying flat and he walks down the road with me and, once again, I become painfully aware of the ravages of illness. His step is slow and he manages only a hundred yards or so. I suppress the urge to shout at passers-by, “Don’t you know who this is? This is Clive James, the great writer!” Instead I shake his hand, to be rewarded by that Dalai Lama grin. He shuffles back towards his flat for another cup of tea and to check if contracts have been exchanged.
26 Responses to “Clive James: De Profundis”
Leave a Reply
- The Ecstasy of Bedford Park
- The Mormons and Liberty Valance
- The Bad-Good and the Good-Bad
- Compassion, Chris Huhne and Twenty Years of Respect
- Christmas Continues
- American Guns
- Cruel Jerks
- Thou Shalt Not Cover Thine Ass
- The Resistible Rise of the Corporate Con Artist
- The Prig Imperiale
- Melvyn Bragg: The Mark of the Mother
- The Future According to Google
- Osborne’s Tears for Thatcher
- Tom Waits: Growling Through the Grain
- Bedford Park: The Enchanted Suburb
- The New Ritual of Dying in Public
- Museums: The Price of Free
- Rage Against the Machines
- Mohsin Hamid: Help for the Dislocated Self
- Tony Versus the Philistines
20 August 2012 at 8:55 am
The wit is willing but the flesh is weak. His is a mind that could have conversed with many of the greatest historical thinkers and held it’s own. As a poet, he is one of my few favourites, “The Backstroke Swimmer Rolf Harris” is a quite beautiful evocation of athleticism.
Thank you for relaying such a poignant and human interview.
20 August 2012 at 11:26 am
Not just a great prose writer but also a great lyricist. His words to Pete Atkin’s Little Hill of Shoes, a song about the Nazi deathcamps, are heart-rending.
20 August 2012 at 1:11 pm
A very good read indeed.
If you can be bothered, please correct the hanging modifier (“Close to death on several occasions, his intake” – the intake was not close to death, he was).
23 August 2012 at 8:40 am
Correction – the song’s title is Hill of Little Shoes. A totally different image you’ll agree.
23 August 2012 at 3:13 pm
Whatever his frailties (moral not physical) he’s a wonderful writer and reading his work has been a true education for me. Brian Appleyard always manages to capture him better than any other interviewer.
27 August 2012 at 2:06 am
I love his writings on skepticism and Wittgenstein, but…a terrible husband? And yet he’s wealthy and has a fascinating life. Why have I behaved so well?
27 August 2012 at 2:26 am
Stay with us a bit longer, Clive. With Hitch and Robert Hughes going too soon, I don’t think we can afford to lose you just yet. Mind you, there’ll be a hell of a Coach and Horses lunch party going on in Valhalla when you do finally turn up.
27 August 2012 at 3:45 am
Love the article, love Clive James, one of the few Australians I can take in. The end of times are interesting times. I am struggling with my own experiment with writing my end, being diagnosed with MND. These physical events certainly send us deeper into our inner ocean. I can only hope Clive is able to finish what he has started . . . .
27 August 2012 at 2:56 pm
His rare wit, erudition, seriousness, inspired prose and poetry have given me great pleasure over the past decades. “Cultural Amnesia” ought to be made compulsory reading; it served me with admirable proof of Clive James’ scholarliness that lacks all pomposity and ego-tripping arrogance. It is to be hoped that the move to Cambridge will bring physical results and improve his well-being considerably so that the Memoirs be continued.
Bryan Appleyard’s excellent interview is timely and much appreciated.
27 August 2012 at 3:14 pm
His rare wit, erudition, seriousness; his inspired prose and poetry have given me great pleasure over decades past. “Cultural Amnesia” ought to be made compulsory reading: it served me with admirable proof of Clive James’ scholarliness that lacks all pomposity and ego-tripping arrogance. It is to be hoped that the move to Cambridge will bring the desired physical advantages and will improve his well-being considerably so that the Memoirs be continued.
Bryan Appleyard’s excellent, timely interview is much appreciated.
27 August 2012 at 4:00 pm
Universal thought’s, but why didnt I think of that?
28 August 2012 at 12:26 am
Thank you for your warm and poignant interview. The possibility of losing James – not to mention missing out on his latest memoir – has so upset me that I shall either have to imbibe a large scotch or retire to bed. I am just so grateful for the joy, merriment, and mental stimulation he has bestowed upon me over the years.
28 August 2012 at 2:56 am
I watched with disgust as the woman with whom he had an affair told all on Australian TV. She argued that she had the right to tell her side of the story, before the media exposed her. Ha! She exposed herself; no-one else knew. The vile “news program” she had contacted flew her to England so she could confront Clive in the street. It brought tears to my eyes to see ill, bewildered, shuffling Clive, still polite and kindly, trying to comprehend what was happening to him as the cameras mercilessly zoomed in.
28 August 2012 at 4:57 am
“I’d like to say I love my wife and family very much and I am sorry that I have behaved so badly . . . ”
This simple, straightforward expression of contrition really moved me. It just shows how you can be a bad boy, playing around with love, and you end up regretting it.
28 August 2012 at 2:31 pm
“behaved so badly” for eight years, caught, and now sorry? well, that’s ok, then; forget it.
28 August 2012 at 11:36 pm
Reading James, whom I discovered while seeing him on CSPAN discuss Cultural Amnesia, has been a life-changing experience for me. His poetry (e.g. “Whitman and the Moth”) is first rate, and Unreliable Memoirs is more than just one of the funniest books ever written: it is a fascinating record of a first-rate, delightfully articulate mind taking the measure of modern culture. I wish him long, happy years yet as well as–since, though it’s none of our business, this review brough it up–a complete reconciliation with his wife. He’s a good, good man, who has meant much to many.
28 August 2012 at 11:39 pm
HangingModifier, please go away. It is a moving and excellently written article and the Hanging Modifier hardly creates any true ambiguity. Hanging modifiers have been used by more great writers than most pushers of precriptivist poppycock have had hot dinners. Go and prove your intellectual superiority by posting images of misplaced apostrophes on one of the Facebook pages designed for the purpose. There you will be able to mix with like-minded folk who all think they are better than everyone else because they have rote learnt a handful of zombie rules taught them by a school teacher who had never cracked a linguistic textbook in her life.
29 August 2012 at 10:56 am
hi
i have often appreciated clive’s audio and written efforts , especially his conversations with peter porter .
so i am a clive j supporter .
however i wonder how clive feels about euthanasia these days ,
i guess i also wonder what he used to think about it years ago
at what stage is enough enough ?
maybe my life efforts would indicate my parents should have had an abotion rather than letting it get to the stage of euthanasia getting to be an option .
29 August 2012 at 9:12 pm
Clive has brought joy and laughter to my life. Thank you Clive.Unreliable Memoirs was a gem. For that I am grateful. May Prue accept his clear apology and contrition for the bad behavior.The sands of time are running…..
Nice article Mr A.
30 August 2012 at 12:46 pm
I absolutely adored “Cultural Amnesia” and agree with Marianne Gordon’s comment – it should be on the shortlist for anyone who wants to understand the 20th century. I’m sorry to hear that he is in such ill health, and I wish him the best – thank you, Brian, for writing this!
31 August 2012 at 1:04 am
He exemplifies many of the good aspects of the Australian character, contrary to what many people seem to think we are not a nation of buffoons and bullies and James’ humour is very Australian.
But Ms Leanne Edelsten, her of all people. Clive may be forgiven for his poor behaviour and judgment by those he has harmed. But his poor taste is unforgivable
5 September 2012 at 1:34 am
Clive has given so much to us all; Aussies, Kiwis, Poms, the whole lot. He’s made us laugh, feel uneasy, be questioning- always with careful, skillful thought and language. Thankyou.
6 September 2012 at 6:41 pm
Brian
A wonderful article.
Yes-he is all those things and more.
Remember however he is also just a man.
A man who read me Shakespeare.
A man who wrote me poetry.
A man who made me laugh.
I man who made me cry.
There is far more to our story that needs to be said.
7 September 2012 at 9:23 am
You can the boy out of Sydney but you can’t take Sydney out of the boy. It’s a kind of cruel, tabloidy crassness. I found his interview with Roman Polanski more revealing of Clive than I did of Roman.
Recall when Clive, questioning Roman over child sex at the staged dinner/interview with the film director, camera rolling, reached over and grabbed one of the walnuts on Roman’s side of the table, and applied the crunch with the nutcracker with some relish. A sly grin followed, whereby indeed his eyes disappeared into the fleshy eyelids.
8 September 2012 at 9:22 am
Jack
Clive is a proud Austrailan and Sydneysider and father of two daughters,
In Australia Jack we tend to call things as we see them.
By your own admission you state you recall the “staged interview”
Exactly….
Having discussed with Clive his views on Polanski-he has NEVER condoned his conduct-in fact finds his justification as do I abhorrent.
There is a word we use In Australia to describe someone who doesn’t have the guts to say what he means.
Jack
Clive and I would call you a “Prick!”
21 October 2012 at 3:12 pm
His sins were scarlet but his books were read.