by Mark Richardson
I first came across Clive James in The Observer, probably in 1975. Being a poor
student, daily papers were too expensive for me, but a Sunday paper was an
attractive option: it was relatively cheap, it had a variety of articles
that might be interesting and, above all, it was ideal for fire-lighting in a
house with no central heating. Its chief glory, though, was Clive James's TV
column. It quickly became a must-read section, before anything else.
Miserable were the days when it said "Clive James is away." His reviews were a joy to read. He was enthusiastic, perceptive and, above all, rip-snortingly funny. He could be writing about plays, music, TV adverts, Wimbledon, interviews or soap operas: all were grist to his mill, and I can't tell you how often I would take more notice of any of the above with his comments still ringing in my ears. He would indeed be critical, but there was always a sense of enthusiasm in his points, rather than offering world-weary cynicism. He never gave the impression that this was all, somehow, beneath him.
His freshness to the scene made him quickly very popular. His fame quickly spread: he published a couple of lengthy satirical poems that excoriated the pompous and the arrogant (how times change), he started to appear on TV himself, first as an interviewee and then as a host himself. His autobiographical Unreliable Memoirs was a huge success. Along with several others emigrés from Australia, Clive James became a familiar, drily comic new star in the firmament.
But I felt that the star was fading. His presence was less engaging, more superficial, or at least, that is how it seemed to me. His fascination with weird Japanese game-shows, which seemingly had become his main diet on his TV shows, held no fascination. It was as if his TV personality was eclipsing the Clive James I had been illuminated and warmed by only a few years earlier. The eclipse was total: I lost sight completely. Bright as he was at the start, he had gone supernova only then to collapse into a sort of black hole, from with nothing could escape.
I am, of course, an idiot. Too easily distracted by new, shinier toys, I never took the trouble to readjust my sight, and look more carefully. It took the most extreme of events, death, to make me see again. I picked up a copy of his most recent poems, Sentenced to Life, and caught a glimpse of what I had missed so casually and shamingly: his talent with words was undimmed in his final years.
In fact, I think it was more than undimmed: these poems are burned brutally bright in tone and purpose. With death coming at him seemingly at the speed of light, James reflects in a few extraordinary poems on his own failures and his own awareness of how much he has lost, but without one scrap of self-pity. In a poem towards the end of the collection that will probably soon be much-anthologised, 'Japanese Maple', he contemplates the tree, his past, his family and his imminent death in a very moving and reflective manner. It is elegant in the way he links the tree and its colour with his own past and future. But the earlier poems in the book deal with how he behaved in the past, how he failed to see his own life and the impact on others, in particular his family, and the way in which he assumed so much about the world around him that then, ironically, prevented him from truly engaging with that world. Poems such as Landfall, where he reminisces about his jet-setting, talk-giving, book-signing life as an absent father and husband, or Event Horizon, which is aptly concluded by the Larkinesque couplet 'It reminds you, just by being there/That it is here that we live or else nowhere.'
- [ ] His poetry is spare, controlled, and so easy. There seems no art here: but in fact every word, accessible and glittering, is just so achingly hard to achieve. That skill has gone, but at least we still have the evidence that there was such a skill. His final poem is partly inspired by a line from Christopher Marlowe: 'O run slowly, slowly, horses of the night!' He has gone with those horses, but running fast. Fare well.
Miserable were the days when it said "Clive James is away." His reviews were a joy to read. He was enthusiastic, perceptive and, above all, rip-snortingly funny. He could be writing about plays, music, TV adverts, Wimbledon, interviews or soap operas: all were grist to his mill, and I can't tell you how often I would take more notice of any of the above with his comments still ringing in my ears. He would indeed be critical, but there was always a sense of enthusiasm in his points, rather than offering world-weary cynicism. He never gave the impression that this was all, somehow, beneath him.
His freshness to the scene made him quickly very popular. His fame quickly spread: he published a couple of lengthy satirical poems that excoriated the pompous and the arrogant (how times change), he started to appear on TV himself, first as an interviewee and then as a host himself. His autobiographical Unreliable Memoirs was a huge success. Along with several others emigrés from Australia, Clive James became a familiar, drily comic new star in the firmament.
But I felt that the star was fading. His presence was less engaging, more superficial, or at least, that is how it seemed to me. His fascination with weird Japanese game-shows, which seemingly had become his main diet on his TV shows, held no fascination. It was as if his TV personality was eclipsing the Clive James I had been illuminated and warmed by only a few years earlier. The eclipse was total: I lost sight completely. Bright as he was at the start, he had gone supernova only then to collapse into a sort of black hole, from with nothing could escape.
I am, of course, an idiot. Too easily distracted by new, shinier toys, I never took the trouble to readjust my sight, and look more carefully. It took the most extreme of events, death, to make me see again. I picked up a copy of his most recent poems, Sentenced to Life, and caught a glimpse of what I had missed so casually and shamingly: his talent with words was undimmed in his final years.
In fact, I think it was more than undimmed: these poems are burned brutally bright in tone and purpose. With death coming at him seemingly at the speed of light, James reflects in a few extraordinary poems on his own failures and his own awareness of how much he has lost, but without one scrap of self-pity. In a poem towards the end of the collection that will probably soon be much-anthologised, 'Japanese Maple', he contemplates the tree, his past, his family and his imminent death in a very moving and reflective manner. It is elegant in the way he links the tree and its colour with his own past and future. But the earlier poems in the book deal with how he behaved in the past, how he failed to see his own life and the impact on others, in particular his family, and the way in which he assumed so much about the world around him that then, ironically, prevented him from truly engaging with that world. Poems such as Landfall, where he reminisces about his jet-setting, talk-giving, book-signing life as an absent father and husband, or Event Horizon, which is aptly concluded by the Larkinesque couplet 'It reminds you, just by being there/That it is here that we live or else nowhere.'
- [ ] His poetry is spare, controlled, and so easy. There seems no art here: but in fact every word, accessible and glittering, is just so achingly hard to achieve. That skill has gone, but at least we still have the evidence that there was such a skill. His final poem is partly inspired by a line from Christopher Marlowe: 'O run slowly, slowly, horses of the night!' He has gone with those horses, but running fast. Fare well.
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