Clive James

Chatted with C.M. on the phone last night. Haven't spoken to him in a couple weeks. He borrowed Clive James a while ago. I was a little surprised at the time, actually -- didn't seem like it was up his alley, but he appeared interested. Last night he said he has read a few of the essays. What surprised me, though, was that he thought it was frequently difficult to keep track of the argument because they were "all over the place." I found the exact opposite to be true -- some of the most lucid writing I have ever read, a towering accomplishment in making complex, multi-faceted topics readily understandable without dumbing them down or glossing over the nuances.

Now, what would account for the difference in perception? He is certainly more educated than I am, not only in quantitative terms (two Masters' degrees for him vs. none for me), but also in qualitative terms, especially when it comes to very "textual" fields (history and political science for him vs. mathematics for me). Most of his work experience until recently, too, required creating and digesting what is probably the most obtuse kind of writing -- market analysis, policy recommendations and related miscellany. I thought that by comparison, James would be a welcome oasis of clear writing in a desert of bureaucratese. But maybe it doesn't work like that. Most high-level academic work these days (and already back in the day when he and I were students) involves far more deconstruction than synthesis, and the further you go, the narrower your focus becomes, until you are forced to stop paying attention to any connections between what you're studying and the real world. Professionally, too, I suspect C.M. was so tired of the dry, turgid and borderline-meaningless policy writing that he intuitively craves something simple, something intentionally one-dimensional. And James, of course, is the ultimate synthesizer and connector. I should probably point out that I am making everything sound worse than it sounds -- C.M. did say he was enjoying the book, and that James's introduction prepared him for the style of the essays. Nice to see someone I am close to liking it.