Monday, April 29, 2019

Must Read Memoirs

You will ask why I don't buy an automatic toaster, and the answer is that I have, several times, but they all broke. I have a cupboard full of their corpses, each preserved in case the plug should come in handy. Here is yet more proof that I remain, as I approach the last lap of my life, someone who, left to himself, would die of exposure even on a warm day. On the tropical island with everything, I would choke on a coconut. There was once a terrible song that started 'People who need people'. Barbra Streisand used to sing it. As far as I remember, the next line wasn't 'Are to be avoided'. It should have been. In the concourse of the great railway stations you can pick us out by the way we stand in front of the automatic ticket machines and look around for advice. All too often we take it from each other, with predictable results.

- From The Blaze of Obscurity: The TV Years by Clive James

[Clive James has written a multi-volume autobiography that is an unmitigated pleasure. In order, the volumes are: Unreliable Memoirs; Falling Towards England; May Week Was in June; North Face of Soho; and The Blaze of Obscurity.]

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