A couple of months ago, I read May Week was in June by Clive James. I’ve liked his humour for years, and recall watching Saturday night Clive in the late 1980′s. He writes very polished text, and is knowingly erudite, which is perhaps why I felt a sense of unease when reading this volume of autobiography. This is a book of reflections on his time in Cambridge as a student of English Literature, and includes his reactions to many of the books he read and authors he studied. This is the type of book which would be well-suited by either more footnotes, or (preferably) a large number of hyperlinks. Rarely have I come across such blatant name-dropping, and, moreover, name-dropping which is rarely didactic, as describing one author as “reminiscent” of another, when the reader knows neither, does not move the situation on any.
I enjoy his writing, and think The Silver Castle to be a wonderful novel, far surpassing Brrm! Brrm!, which itself is excellent.
It would seem that James is a polymath, and here he recounts his time as in the Cambridge Footlights, plus his appreciation of French and Italian language, literature, culture, and tourism; films, film-making, and Cambridge cinemas; and beginnings as a writer and poet for Granta. Even with formal study of language and literature under my belt, and a fairly wide-ranging appetite for English writing, I was left fairly pummelled by all the references to other works. I wasn’t expecting May Week to be a round-up of Japanese game shows, or current satire, or travelogues (all of which he has made into programmes for British TV), but something a little more accessible. Perhaps having it as a commuting book didn’t help, reading it in staccato form, but this did allow me some time in between readings to digest some of the content.
Well-written, but terse.
