For anyone who has listened to the Radio National program broadcast a couple of years ago that was a conversation between two expatriate Australians, the poet Peter Porter and the one and only Clive James, it will be no surprise that the latter has put together his collection of important thinkers and their writings. Interestingly for James, who, through his reviews in the Times Literary Supplement and activities in other UK media, is an icon in London, this publication comes with thanks not only to Picador in that city but with ‘deepest and longest thanks’ to Robert Weil at W W Norton, New York. The ‘p’ chapter gives a good idea of the variety of those included, containing Octavio Paz, Alfred Polgar, Beatrix Potter, Jean Prevost and Marcel Proust. Forty years in the making, it will be a worthy addition to any serious reader’s library and in mine will sit with the similar but very different discussions by Harold Bloom. All booksellers should take note of the one sentence discussing education in Vienna in the 19th century: ‘You didn’t complete your education and then start your career. Your education was your career, and it was never completed.’ It seems to sum up bookselling to me and Cultural Amnesia added, in the most enjoyable way, to my education.

Clive Tilsley is the owner of Fullers Bookshops, Hobart and Launceston, and is still continuing to read and learn after 34 years as a bookseller

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

Tags: clive james