I’ve read most of Clive James’ considerable volumes of essays. My favorite collection is Cultural Amnesia where James shows how our culture has been relentlessly dumbed down. This weighty sequel, Cultural Cohesion, collects 48 essays that help explain our cultural and why that’s important. Just glance down the the Table of Contents and you’ll find a number of essays that will interest you. James is a brilliant writer and explainer. I was impressed with his knowledge of Mark Twain’s work. James doesn’t shy away from bashing writers and poets he finds mediocre. His essay on Theodore Roethke is a good example of revealing the shortcomings in Roethke’s poetry. On the other hand, James is also a champion of writers he loves: Orwell, Larkin, Auden, and Primo Levi. For many of you, the essays on “The Sherlockologists” and “Raymond Chandler” will deliver new perspectives. If you love intelligent writing, this book is for you! GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
A Note on the Text
Foreward
Introduction to the Paperback Edition
PART I: POETRY
1. On Auden’s Death 3
2. On Seamus Heaney 19
3. Robert Lowell’s Marble Chips 25
4. Four Essays on Philip Larkin 38
5. Poetry’s Ideal Critic: Randall Jarrell 84
6. Two Essays on Theodore Roethke 90
7. Charles Johnston’s Catacomb Graffiti 102
8. Nabokov’s Grand Folly 117
9. Stevie Smith: Not Drowning But Waving 123
10. Galway Kinnell’s Great Poem 129
11. Les Murray and His Master Spirits 136
12. The Great Generation of Australian Poetry 149

FICTION AND LITERATURE
13. D. H. Lawrence in Tansit 165
14. The Perpetual Promise of lames Agee 179
15. The Sherlockologists 190
16. Raymond Chandler 201
17. Bitter Seeds: Solzhenitsyn 214
18. Go Back to the Cold! 227
19. A Blizzard of Tiny Kisses 237
20. A Death in Life 245
21. Primo Levi’s Last Will and Testament 259
22. Primo Levi and the Painted Veil 274
23. The All of Orwell 284
24. Mark Twain, Journalist 305
25. Casanova Comes Again 328
26. Hamlet in Perspective 340

CULTURE AND CRITICISM
27. F. R. Leavis in America 349
28. A Whole Gang of Noise: Susan Sontag 358
29. Germaine Greer: Getting Married Later 362
30. The Metropolitan Critic 370
31: It is of a Windiness: Lillian Hellman 387
32. Mailer’s Marilyn 394
33. From Log Cabin to Log Cabin 409
34. Hard-Core Gore 421
35. Evelyn Waugh’s Last Stand 429
36. As a Matter of Tact 436
37. These Staggering Questions 445
38. How Montale Earned His Living 457
39. NV Rampant Meets Martin Amis 466
40. Hitler’s Unwitting Exculpator 471
41. He That Played the Fool 497
42. Bertrand Russell Struggles after Heaven 503

PART IV: VISUAL IMAGES
43. The New Diaghilev 523
44. Pier Paolo Pain in the Neck 525
45. Mondo Fellini 539
46. Who Was That Masked Man? 561
47. The Gentle Slope to Castalia 568
48. Pictures in Silver 585

Index 605