Clive james

Thursday

Cosmo Landesman

My Martin Amis FOMO

There’s a form of social anxiety that a lot of people suffer from — FOMO, Fear of Missing Out. “Fear” suggests something imaginary, that isn’t really happening. Not so. I don’t fear missing out, because I know I am. Friends are always asking me: are you appearing at the Hay Literary festival? No! Am I speaking at the Idler festival? No! Am I reading extracts from my book at the Cambridge Literary festival? No! “What?!” they exclaim in mock disbelief — and then ask why I’m not appearing at some small, obscure, local village literary fête, somewhere in the rectum of rural England. I’ve gotten used to the seasonal snub from the lit-festival establishment. And there are literary events all over London that I haven’t been invited to as well. OK, I’ll live.

Amis

Friday

Neal Pollack

The Greatest Living American Writer on Salman Rushdie

In the late 1990s, author Neal Pollack developed an alter-ego character, "The Greatest Living American Writer," for the McSweeneys website, to satirize a generation of pretentious authors, particularly Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal, as well as macho literary journalists. That character formed the basis of Pollack's first book, the cult classic The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature. The GLAW has since appeared in numerous other publications,  left- and right-wing and completely apolitical, surfacing and de-surfacing as the times demand. Now he's back in The Spectator World, until we get tired of him.  I have been the Greatest Living American Writer across eight decades of world literature and have seen many shocking acts of violence.

greatest living american writer salman rushdie

Wednesday

Matt Purple

Missing Bob Dole in witless Washington

Bob Dole passed away this week, and according to the press coverage, he took with him an entire golden age of senatorial comity. The New York Times characterized Dole's time in the Senate as "the days when Republicans and Democrats at least tried to work together" while praising "his instincts as a deal maker." It was yet another lament for a supposed Pax Bipartisana gone by — and it's not like the Times is entirely wrong. Congress really was less dysfunctional during the 1980s and 90s when Dole was at his prime. But just as the famous Ronald Reagan/Tip O'Neill working relationship is overrated (Tip in his memoir: "It was sinful that Ronald Reagan ever became president"), so too was Dole not just some huk-yukking back-slapper.

bob dole

Thursday

Ian Thomson

Alasdair Gray gives us a vivid new Paradiso

From our UK edition

As every Italian schoolchild knows, The Divine Comedy opens in a supernatural dark wood just before sunrise on Good Friday 1300. Dante Alighieri, a figure in his own work, has lost his way in middle age and is alone and frightened in the darkness. The ghost of the Roman poet Virgil is about to show him Hell: Midway in the journey of our life I found myself in a dark wood, for the right path was lost. Begun in the early 14th century, Dante’s poem is, for many, the greatest single work of western literature. With its dramatic chiaroscuro of hellish fuming mists and paradisal stellar regions, the poem is ‘awful’ in the archaic sense of the word (still valid in the Italian terribile), meaning to inspire awe.

Saturday

Mark Mason

I regret my bust-up with the Bee Gees: Clive Anderson interviewed

From our UK edition

‘The really tricky thing,’ says Clive Anderson as we discuss the topic of being recognised in public, ‘is when they say, “I love your programmes —that thing you did with Margarita Pracatan…” Do I say now that that wasn’t me? Because if you let them carry on about how they loved your Postcards From…, and the Japanese game show, and then you tell them, they get very indignant and say, “Well, why did you let me give you all that praise?”’ It’s easy to understand the mistake in the abstract — indeed The Spectator’s arts editor made it himself in his email to me: ‘Could you interview Clive James for us?’ (If I could manage that, Igor, I wouldn’t be writing for a living.