North Face of Soho: More Unreliable Memoirs - Softcover

James, Clive

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330481274 ISBN 13: 9780330481274

Publisher: Picador, 2007

Synopsis

Taking us from Fleet Street to Clive James on TV, from Russian department stores to Paris fashion shows via fatherhood, some killer bees, and a satire starring Anne Robinson as Mrs Thatcher, North Face of Soho is the larger-than-life story of a life lived to the full.It's not just that he writes a lot, but that he writes with intense perfectionism, and delivers his gags with honed elegance - Sunday Times. One of the most rewarding aspects of this exuberant work is James' willingness to reveal the backstage mechanics of his professional life. This book is enormously entertaining - Sunday Telegraph. In the case of many people who attempt an autobiography even a single volume is one too many. In the case of Clive James the four volumes now in existence are too few. If the final tally puts him up there with Marcel Proust, so much the better - FT Magazine. I feel I know more about the author after reading it than I gleaned from all of his other books put together. This is a book about hard-earned self-knowledge. What makes it funny is quite how hard the self-knowledge was to earn - William Leith, Evening Standard.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

‘The best an entertainer can hope to do, when writing about what he does (and nobody asks him to do that: he decides to do it for his own reasons), is to be instructive. As a consequence, this book will be full of homilies about what to avoid. These homilies are sincerely meant, but with one proviso, which I hope is a saving grace: if I myself had avoided all these things, I would probably have got nothing done at all, because the errors were essential. There is hope, therefore, that young people contemplating a career in the arts and the media might find guidance here, and those less young people who have run into difficulties might find consolation. For readers leading normal, and therefore more important, lives, there might also be the consolation of any evidence I can offer that those of us who have been granted a disproportionate ability to express ourselves may not always have the best selves to express. I hope to get all the way to my grave without committing any major crimes, but within the limits of the law there are very few human failings that I have not embodied. Some of them I can’t specify without embarrassing other people. But if I did not embarrass myself, this book would be too far short of the truth to repay reading, or to be worth writing. The older I get, the more time I spend wishing I had done things differently. I wish that could be different, but there you go.’

About the Author:

Clive James is the author of more than thirty books. As well as his memoirs, he has published essays, collections of literary and television criticism, travel writing, verse and novels. As a television performer he has appeared regularly for both the BBC and ITV, most notably as writer and presenter of the Postcard series of travel documentaries. In 1992 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia and in 2003 he was awarded the Philip Hodgins memorial medal for literature.

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0330481274
• ISBN 13: 9780330481274
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 264