Clive Is Clobbered

Sun Herald

Saturday June 30, 1990

SIMON KENT

THE third volume of clever-clogs Clive James's memoirs, entitled May Week Was In June, has just been reviewed by the London critics. No doubt Kogarah's most famous export is still wondering just where he lost the plot.

Writing in The Times, Fiona McCarthy said: "I have never met Clive James and I would certainly not want to."

Mark Lawson (Independent on Sunday) said James was "a light writer with a tendency to wear his learning heavily".

Martyn Harris in New Statesman and Society was appalled by James'boastfulness: "One minute James is too dumb to find his way across Pembroke Court in the fog, and the next he is teaching himself Italian in 10 minutes flat. "James's self-effacement is an extreme form of narcissism."

In The Observer Jonathan Keates noted the growing maturity of the writer since the first edition dealing with his Kogarah days. "If not necessarily wiser, he is a good deal sadder, and the trilogy cleverly re-enacts the transformation of cocky little shotnose into harrassed grown-up."