Worst white man on the cover of the New Statesman's 'Great White Male' issue

Really good writeup of James' career here: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n05/christopher-tayler/roth-pinter-berlin-and-me

I don't want to belabor this because obviously I recognize the irony of a thread like this evolving into a discussion of the qualities of the white males under the microscope but "cultural amnesia" by James opened my eyes in an accessible way to a lot of subjects w which I had only cursory knowledge and did so w v good prose. Admittedly I disagreed with him about plenty-his hot takes on Benjamin and 20th cen philosophy in general strike me as borderline slate pitches as ideas. But even the subjects on which I feel pretty knowledgeable already (miles davis or ellington or fitzgerald) I came away thinking about interesting questions--in the case of fitzgerald, a really exciting enthusiasm. I can definitely read a pompousness in it, it's an attitude that reminds me very singularly of ilx. Lol but serious? I mean one of the things I like about lex's writing is that it can be plate-clearingly pompous. This isn't a backhanded thing.

At any rate I feel faintly ridiculous defending a white man against climate change in a thread understandably rolling its eyes at a great white men magazine issue but i guess I'm in part hoping to provoke a little more specifics if we're gonna tear him down lol

Nb I haven't read that link yet.

trying to parse if this issue was actually about the great white male by the great white male for the great white male.

if accepted as so then the entire thread and complaint is obv totally wrongheaded id say. the rest of ye have twitter and ilx to deign to tell that gender and racial category how you'd like it to behave so what harm a publication focusing on the subject introspectively. in fact why the fuck ask mary beard anything.

nb if this wasn't the premise I been drinking

don't great white males already have a forum to focus on themselves aka the entire planet and everything in it

the entire planet and everything in it and most of twitter and ilx

my opposition to this thread is more disciplined - it challenges the great white male hegemony (even in the most inconsequential + worthless way) and must be suppressed.

the entire planet (no) and ilx (no lol) and twitter (no wtf lol) and one dedicated new states (which let's be honest wasn't exactly dragged out the fuckin hands of sjcru circulation for the purpose now was it)

Clive James

Might want to use this thread if we want to discuss his merits.

i think this is the right thread for it. i agree with others who say that his distrust of ideology causes him to misinterpret things but i don't think this long anti-ideological tradition in (especially) british letters -- stretching back at least to orwell, or at least he is the paradigm of it -- is something we should write off entirely. atwood is a thinker in this camp imo, it's not just a male thing. anyway, this:

- Clive's poem is average. A bit like Stephen Fry. Says a lot in a style but its content-free guff that is apologised by 'bridging the gap between high and low culture'.

i really don't think that poem is a bridging between high and low culture. i think it's an unpretentious meditation on impending death that avoids both sentimentality and self-pity. this is way harder to do than it seems. the fact that the poem seems so natural, i mean, this is its accomplishment.

don't great white males already have a forum to focus on themselves aka the entire planet and everything in it

― Mordy, Tuesday, October 14, 2014 6:53 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the entire planet and everything in it and most of twitter and ilx

― astuteness isn't everything (wins), Tuesday, October 14, 2014 6:55 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this isn't really about me wanting to focus on white men any more than the thread already is. by all means, tear them all down. i'm throwing an underhand pitch to a lex with a baseball bat, not trying to beam him with it.

idk im missing a lot of contextual references on this thread so im just going to fuck off tho

i really don't think that poem is a bridging between high and low culture. i think it's an unpretentious meditation on impending death that avoids both sentimentality and self-pity. this is way harder to do than it seems. the fact that the poem seems so natural, i mean, this is its accomplishment.

yeah, i think xxyyzz's critique of the poem was lazy nonsensical weak-sauce wannabe iconoclasm tbh.

I put in lots of things in one (partly bcz we have talked a bit about James in the past). I wasn't criticising the poem for the bridging. That is a quality resrved for much of James' overall work.

So are you going to tell me a 'meditation on death' doesn't sound pretentious already? But those are your terms.

I think it lost me on 'enhanced, in fact' and 'A final flood of colors will live on'. To believe that faculties aren't diminished feels too hopeful and yes, sentimental to me.

I know attacking a dying man's poem isn't a good look but hey art will be a ruthless judge.

I don't think calling it "average" was attacking it really tbh am sure history will forgive u yr withering insight

It won't notice any defenses, averages or attacks. History does not notice posts on message board, although there are footnotes, so some of us might make that.

I'm banking on it tbh

I think so too but I am just channeling a great white male's empty confidence in themselves and their non-ablities.

my major discovery from this thread is that if someone attacks clive james I am inclined to defend him, and if someone defends clive james I'm inclined to attack him.

I don't like that poem though.

haha ilx eh

my major discovery from this thread is that if someone attacks clive james I am inclined to defend him, and if someone defends clive james I'm inclined to attack him.

― woof, Wednesday, 15 October 2014 09:58 (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

I feel eliciting this response is the defining trait of the GWM organism. Unless you're Parsons. Fuck off Parsons. Or de Bottom - he's f'ing irritating in all sorts of ways, but that thing he did at the Rijksmuseum with the fucking post-its has really been gnawing away at me. It perfectly expresses his way of shitting all over things with himself in the name of making things 'accessible' (don't trust people to understand things unless they've got de bottom shit smeared all over them), or relevant (relevant to my banal de bottom shit interpretation of the now). it's so reductive - everything reduced to de importance of de bottom.

I'm totally calling my 2014-15 Fantasy Philosphy Team 'Race to de Botton'.

started from de Botton now we here

started from de Botton now my whole team fucking here

Rijksmuseum with the fucking post-its has really been gnawing away at me.

Sorry you had to see that. I'd love to go to Rijksmuseum someday but they have to take that crap off first.

i only really have attack/defend contrariness with James and maybe Amis… for me it's mostly to do with being an English books person, they've always been there for the 25 years of my proper reading life so the ledger is very very long (but as per upthread, that permapresence is a symptom of GWM culture).

But w/ Amis, I'm way less inclined to try to defend, partly because there's always enough of a crowd sticking up for Money, & partly bcz well take the interview with Perry from the issue:

GP How do you think we can tease out the cultural and political and gender influence of Default Man? Because he is a minority.

MA Well, I don’t think he should be persecuted on that account.

GP He certainly punches well above his weight, demographically, because historically he’s been given all the opportunities.

MA I think he’s heading for a time of comparative wilderness, don’t you? It’s a great disadvantage to be Default Man now.

GP Do you really think it is?

MA It’s getting to be.

GP But he is still Default and, because he is Default, he has power.

MA Christopher Hitchens’s son, Alexander, who’s making a name for himself as a journalist, has as his byline Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens – Meleagrou is his mother’s maiden name. And I thought that was brilliant. “Alexander Hitchens” is defaultish, right? His national identity is a sort of albatross. I always wished I had something exotic about me, because everyone favours that now.

GP It’d be a fun gentleman’s club game to rally round stories of the persecution of Great White Males – but it doesn’t look like that from the outside. It looks like they still have a monopoly on power.

MA On power, yes, but in art, no.

GP Well, within my business, visual art, the intake is 75 per cent female and yet you look at who has showed their work and I think there still is a dominance of males.

etc i mean there's plenty more in there too.

Christ.

there's worse, but when he gets to "that’s Beckett skewered for ever" I just can't

So are you going to tell me a 'meditation on death' doesn't sound pretentious already?

why would that be pretentious? death is something we all have to deal with.

besides mine was better tbh

I don't think it's the "death" bit that's pretentious here, treesh.

problem is death's been approached innumerable times before (because it's both mundane and unique), by many people - you're going to need to bring some chops to justify that title to avoid bathos.

it can make what comes look vapid, as I think this poem is - dull lines, mawkish truisms or just truisms. he wrote one about fading mental capacity and no longer being the centre of attention, which is better I think, tho his line never exactly sings.

Yes its the 'meditation' that I picked on. Bit allergic to anything deacribed as such.

i find the james poem pretty staid in its sentimentality. i don't think a ponderous tone equals meaningfulness.

in terms of recent works by minor white male poets looking at death, I liked Hugo Williams' Dialysis poems more.

i thought its strength was its willingness to risk cliche for the purpose of honesty. i have some personal associations with the imagery too. it's not the kind of poem designed to blow people away but it feels true.

...

ach, fine, it's your aesthetic i guess

now a thread in which ilmers review a pome

it's what clive james would have wanted

i met clive davis back in may. i didn't know it was him at the time.

i sat and watched some Cardinal Burns last night, too tired to go to bed, and now i hate Robert Webb just a shade less

Clive Davis vs Clive James

Arista had an awesome logo

James/Davis/Dunn/Tyldesley/of India poll needed

Dunn, obvs

Anderson/Sinclair/Owen/Stafford Smith

Still Dunn.

sounds like a dunn deal