Novelist and Memoirist
In 1979 James published his first book of autobiography, Unreliable Memoirs, which recounted his early life in Australia and extended to over a hundred reprintings. It was followed by four other volumes of autobiography: Falling Towards England (1985), which covered his London years; May Week Was in June (1990), which dealt with his time at Cambridge; North Face of Soho (2006), and The Blaze of Obscurity (2009), concerning his subsequent career. An omnibus edition of the first three volumes was published under the generic title of Always Unreliable.
James has also written four novels: Brilliant Creatures (1983), The Remake (1987), Brrm! Brrm! (1991), published in the United States as The Man from Japan, and The Silver Castle (1996).
In 1999, John Gross included an excerpt from Unreliable Memoirs in The New Oxford Book of English Prose. John Carey chose Unreliable Memoirs as one of the fifty most enjoyable books of the twentieth century in his book Pure Pleasure (2000).
Read more about this topic: Clive James, Career
Famous quotes containing the word novelist:
“Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners, we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers.”
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)