In some sense, I\u2019m glad Clive James wrote Cultural Amnesia in the early 2000’s. At that time, he was able to end it on an optimistic note. Despite living in a post 9\/11 world, he was able to conclude the book with the feeling that if the end of history wasn\u2019t already beginning, that it was imminent.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2021 Cultural Amnesia feels more like a coda to the greatest hits of Western Civilization as we enter the neo-1984 era where nothing beautiful is safe from the sanctimonious purges of postmodern puritans hellbent on bleaching our meta-narratives. Where that leads us remains to be seen. I’m not optimistic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Present context aside, this is a beautifully written book. It\u2019s an indulgent tour of the stars of modern history who come together to form a constellation in which the imaginative reader can begin to see the shape of human achievement, both for good and for ill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I listened to the audio version which is narrated very nicely by the author. It is, unbeknownst to me when I started it, heavily abridged. Fortunately, each chapter in the book is a self-contained vignette of a person that James found interesting and the book doesn’t need to be read in any order. I’m looking forward to finishing the chapters missing from the audiobook as I thumb through the paper version throughout the rest of of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In some sense, I\u2019m glad Clive James wrote Cultural Amnesia in the early 2000’s. At that time, he was able to end it on an optimistic note. Despite living in a post 9\/11 world, he was able to conclude the book with the feeling that if the end of history wasn\u2019t already beginning, that it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etc"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ppj2P-dg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=822"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":823,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822\/revisions\/823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}