Cultural Amnesia (book)
Encyclopedia
Cultural Amnesia is a book of biographical essays by Clive James
Clive James
Clive James, AM is an Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet and memoirist, best known for his autobiographical series Unreliable Memoirs, for his chat shows and documentaries on British television and for his prolific journalism...

, first published in 2007. The U.K. title, published by MacMillan
Macmillan Publishers
Macmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...

, is Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time, while the U.S. title, published by W.W. Norton, is Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories From History and the Arts The cover illustration was adapted from a work by German Modernist
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

 designer Peter Behrens
Peter Behrens
Peter Behrens was a German architect and designer. He was important for the modernist movement, as several of the movements leading names worked for him when they were young.-Biography:Behrens attended the Christianeum Hamburg from September 1877 until Easter 1882...

.

Contents

The book is series of essays on people whose apothegms James has been fascinated by, most of them from the 20th century. The chapters are in alphabetical order of the subject's name, as follows:
  • Anna Akhmatova
    Anna Akhmatova
    Anna Andreyevna Gorenko , better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova , was a Russian and Soviet modernist poet, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Russian canon.Harrington p11...

  • Peter Altenberg
    Peter Altenberg
    Peter Altenberg was a writer and poet from Vienna, Austria. He was key to the genesis of early modernism in the city.-Biography:...

  • Louis Armstrong
    Louis Armstrong
    Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....

  • Raymond Aron
    Raymond Aron
    Raymond-Claude-Ferdinand Aron was a French philosopher, sociologist, journalist and political scientist.He is best known for his 1955 book The Opium of the Intellectuals, the title of which inverts Karl Marx's claim that religion was the opium of the people -- in contrast, Aron argued that in...

  • Walter Benjamin
    Walter Benjamin
    Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...

  • Marc Bloch
    Marc Bloch
    Marc Léopold Benjamin Bloch was a French historian who cofounded the highly influential Annales School of French social history. Bloch was a quintessential modernist. An assimilated Alsatian Jew from an academic family in Paris, he was deeply affected in his youth by the Dreyfus Affair...

  • Jorge Luis Borges
    Jorge Luis Borges
    Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...

  • Robert Brasillach
    Robert Brasillach
    Robert Brasillach was a French author and journalist. Brasillach is best known as the editor of Je suis partout, a nationalist newspaper which came to advocate various fascist movements and supported Jacques Doriot...

  • Sir Thomas Browne
  • Albert Camus
    Albert Camus
    Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...

  • Dick Cavett
    Dick Cavett
    Richard Alva "Dick" Cavett is a former American television talk show host known for his conversational style and in-depth discussion of issues...

  • Paul Celan
    Paul Celan
    Paul Celan was a poet and translator...

  • Chamfort
  • Coco Chanel
    Coco Chanel
    Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel was a pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist thought, menswear-inspired fashions, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her an important figure in 20th-century fashion. She was the founder of one of the most famous fashion brands, Chanel...

  • Charles Chaplin
  • Nirad C. Chaudhuri
    Nirad C. Chaudhuri
    Italic textNirad C. Chaudhuri was a Bengali−English writer and cultural commentator...

  • G. K. Chesterton
    G. K. Chesterton
    Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....

  • Jean Cocteau
    Jean Cocteau
    Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...

  • Gianfranco Contini
  • Benedetto Croce
    Benedetto Croce
    Benedetto Croce was an Italian idealist philosopher, and occasionally also politician. He wrote on numerous topics, including philosophy, history, methodology of history writing and aesthetics, and was a prominent liberal, although he opposed laissez-faire free trade...

  • Tony Curtis
    Tony Curtis
    Tony Curtis was an American film actor whose career spanned six decades, but had his greatest popularity during the 1950s and early 1960s. He acted in over 100 films in roles covering a wide range of genres, from light comedy to serious drama...

  • Ernst Robert Curtius
    Ernst Robert Curtius
    Ernst Robert Curtius was a German literary scholar, a philologist and Romance language literary critic....

  • Miles Davis
    Miles Davis
    Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...

  • Sergei Diaghilev
    Sergei Diaghilev
    Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev , usually referred to outside of Russia as Serge, was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, from which many famous dancers and choreographers would arise.-Early life and career:...

  • Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
    Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
    Pierre Eugène Drieu La Rochelle was a French writer of novels, short stories and political essays, who lived and died in Paris...

  • Alfred Einstein
  • Duke Ellington
    Duke Ellington
    Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...

  • Federico Fellini
    Federico Fellini
    Federico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , was an Italian film director and scriptwriter. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential and widely revered filmmakers of the 20th century...

  • W. C. Fields
    W. C. Fields
    William Claude Dukenfield , better known as W. C. Fields, was an American comedian, actor, juggler and writer...

  • F. Scott Fitzgerald
    F. Scott Fitzgerald
    Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...

  • Gustave Flaubert
    Gustave Flaubert
    Gustave Flaubert was a French writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary , and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style.-Early life and education:Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen,...

  • Sigmund Freud
    Sigmund Freud
    Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...

  • Egon Friedell
    Egon Friedell
    Egon Friedell born Egon Friedmann, 21 January 1878, in Vienna, died 16 March 1938, in Vienna, was a prominent Austrian philosopher, historian, journalist, actor, cabaret performer and theatre critic.- Early life :...

  • François Furet
    François Furet
    -Biography:Born in Paris on 27 March 1927, into a wealthy family, François Furet was a brilliant student who graduated from the Sorbonne with the highest honors and soon decided on a life of research, teaching and writing. He received his education at the Lycée Janson de Sailly and at the faculty...

  • Charles de Gaulle
    Charles de Gaulle
    Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....

  • Edward Gibbon
    Edward Gibbon
    Edward Gibbon was an English historian and Member of Parliament...


  • Terry Gilliam
    Terry Gilliam
    Terrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several films, including Brazil , The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , The Fisher King , and 12 Monkeys...

  • Joseph Goebbels
    Joseph Goebbels
    Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...

  • Witold Gombrowicz
    Witold Gombrowicz
    Witold Marian Gombrowicz was a Polish novelist and dramatist. His works are characterized by deep psychological analysis, a certain sense of paradox and an absurd, anti-nationalist flavor...

  • William Hazlitt
    William Hazlitt
    William Hazlitt was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. Yet his work is...

  • Hegel
  • Heinrich Heine
    Heinrich Heine
    Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann...

  • Adolf Hitler
    Adolf Hitler
    Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

  • Ricarda Huch
    Ricarda Huch
    Ricarda Huch was a pioneering German intellectual. Trained as a historian, and the author of many works of European history, she also wrote novels, poems, and a play. Asteroid 879 Ricarda is named in her honour.- Life :...

  • Ernst Jünger
    Ernst Jünger
    Ernst Jünger was a German writer. In addition to his novels and diaries, he is well known for Storm of Steel, an account of his experience during World War I. Some say he was one of Germany's greatest modern writers and a hero of the conservative revolutionary movement following World War I...

  • Franz Kafka
    Franz Kafka
    Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...

  • John Keats
    John Keats
    John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...

  • Leszek Kołakowski
  • Alexandra Kollontai
    Alexandra Kollontai
    Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai was a Russian Communist revolutionary, first as a member of the Mensheviks, then from 1914 on as a Bolshevik. In 1919 she became the first female government minister in Europe...

  • Heda Margolius Kovály
    Heda Margolius Kovály
    Heda Margolius Kovály was a Czech writer.- Early life :She was born Heda Bloch to Jewish parents in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where she lived until 1941 when her family was rounded up along with the rest of the city's Jewish population and taken to the Lodz Ghetto in central Poland.-...

  • Karl Kraus
    Karl Kraus
    Karl Kraus was an Austrian writer and journalist, known as a satirist, essayist, aphorist, playwright and poet. He is regarded as one of the foremost German-language satirists of the 20th century, especially for his witty criticism of the press, German culture, and German and Austrian...

  • Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
    Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
    Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was a German scientist, satirist and Anglophile. As a scientist, he was the first to hold a professorship explicitly dedicated to experimental physics in Germany...

  • Norman Mailer
    Norman Mailer
    Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...

  • Nadezhda Mandelstam
    Nadezhda Mandelstam
    Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam was a Russian writer and educator, and the wife of the poet Osip Mandelstam, who died in 1938 in a transit camp to the gulag of Siberia...

  • Golo Mann
    Golo Mann
    Golo Mann , born Angelus Gottfried Thomas Mann, was a popular German historian, essayist and writer. He was the third child of the novelist Thomas Mann and his wife Katia Mann.-Life:...

  • Heinrich Mann
    Heinrich Mann
    Luiz Heinrich Mann was a German novelist who wrote works with strong social themes. His attacks on the authoritarian and increasingly militaristic nature of pre-World War II German society led to his exile in 1933.-Life and work:Born in Lübeck as the oldest child of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann...

  • Michael Mann
  • Thomas Mann
    Thomas Mann
    Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...

  • Mao Zedong
    Mao Zedong
    Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...

  • Chris Marker
    Chris Marker
    Chris Marker is a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and film essayist. His best known films are La jetée , A Grin Without a Cat , Sans Soleil and AK , an essay film on the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa...

  • John McCloy
    John J. McCloy
    John Jay McCloy was a lawyer and banker who served as Assistant Secretary of War during World War II, president of the World Bank and U.S. High Commissioner for Germany...

  • Zinka Milanov
    Zinka Milanov
    Zinka Milanov was a Croatian-born operatic spinto soprano who had a major career centred on the New York Metropolitan Opera.-Biography:...

  • Czesław Miłosz
  • Eugenio Montale
    Eugenio Montale
    Eugenio Montale was an Italian poet, prose writer, editor and translator, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1975.- Early years :...

  • Montesquieu
  • Alan Moorehead
    Alan Moorehead
    Alan McCrae Moorehead OBE was a war correspondent and author of popular histories, most notably two books on the nineteenth-century exploration of the Nile, The White Nile and The Blue Nile . Australian-born, he lived in England, and Italy, from 1937.-Biography:Alan Moorehead was born in...

  • Paul Muratov
    Paul Muratov
    thumb|right|180px| [[Nina Berberova]], above, called Paul Muratov " a whole and accomplished European, a man of inward order who understood the internal disorder of others." She played chess with him and he was a member of the vibrant Russian emigré community that Berberova wrote about in The...

  • Lewis Namier
  • Grigory Ordzhonokidze
  • Octavio Paz
    Octavio Paz
    Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...

  • Alfred Polgar
    Alfred Polgar
    Alfred Polgar was an Austrian-born journalist, one of the renowned wits of the Vienna coffeehouses. He left Austria in 1938, and later worked in Hollywood.He was known as a drama critic, in Berlin 1925 to 1933, and an essayist...

  • Beatrix Potter
    Beatrix Potter
    Helen Beatrix Potter was an English author, illustrator, natural scientist and conservationist best known for her imaginative children’s books featuring animals such as those in The Tale of Peter Rabbit which celebrated the British landscape and country life.Born into a privileged Unitarian...


  • Jean Prévost
    Jean Prévost
    Jean Prévost was a French writer , journalist, and Resistance fighter.Born in Saint-Pierre-lès-Nemours, Prévost was educated at the primary school in Montivilliers. near Rouen, where his father was principal. In 1911, he moved to the prestidigious Lycée Pierre Corneille in Rouen...

  • Marcel Proust
    Marcel Proust
    Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...

  • Edgar Quinet
    Edgar Quinet
    Edgar Quinet was a French historian and intellectual.-Early years:Born at Bourg-en-Bresse, in the département of Ain. His father, Jérôme Quinet, had been a commissary in the army, but being a strong republican and disgusted with Napoleon's 18 Brumaire coup, he gave up his post and devoted himself...

  • Marcel Reich-Ranicki
    Marcel Reich-Ranicki
    Marcel Reich-Ranicki is a Polish-born German literary critic and member of the literary group Gruppe 47. He is regarded as one of the most influential contemporary literary critics in the field of German literature and therefore was in Germany often called the 'Pope of literature' .-Life:Marcel...

  • Jean-François Revel
    Jean-François Revel
    Jean-François Revel was a French politician, journalist, author, prolific philosopher and member of the Académie française from June 1998...

  • Richard Rhodes
    Richard Rhodes
    Richard Lee Rhodes is an American journalist, historian, and author of both fiction and non-fiction , including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb , and most recently, The Twilight of the Bombs...

  • Rainer Maria Rilke
    Rainer Maria Rilke
    René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke , better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language...

  • Virginio Rognoni
    Virginio Rognoni
    Virginio Rognoni is an Italian politician, who was a prominent member of Christian Democracy. He was several times Interior Minister, Minister of Defense and Minister of Justice...

  • Ernesto Sabato
    Ernesto Sabato
    Ernesto Sabato , was an Argentine writer, painter and physicist. According to the BBC he "won some of the most prestigious prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary world throughout Latin America"...

  • Edward Said
    Edward Said
    Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...

  • Sainte-Beuve
  • José Saramago
    José Saramago
    José de Sousa Saramago, GColSE was a Nobel-laureate Portuguese novelist, poet, playwright and journalist. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor. Harold Bloom has described Saramago as "a...

  • Jean-Paul Sartre
    Jean-Paul Sartre
    Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...

  • Erik Satie
    Erik Satie
    Éric Alfred Leslie Satie was a French composer and pianist. Satie was a colourful figure in the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde...

  • Arthur Schnitzler
    Arthur Schnitzler
    Dr. Arthur Schnitzler was an Austrian author and dramatist.- Biography :Arthur Schnitzler, son of a prominent Hungarian-Jewish laryngologist Johann Schnitzler and Luise Markbreiter , was born in Praterstraße 16, Leopoldstadt, Vienna, in the Austro-Hungarian...

  • Sophie Scholl
    Sophie Scholl
    Sophia Magdalena Scholl was a German student, active within the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany. She was convicted of high treason after having been found distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of Munich with her brother Hans...

  • Wolf Jobst Siedler
    Wolf Jobst Siedler
    Wolf Jobst Siedler is a German publisher and writer.He studied at the Freie Universität Berlin and worked as a journalist...

  • Manès Sperber
    Manès Sperber
    Manès Sperber was an Austrian-French novelist, essayist and psychologist. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Jan Heger and N.A. Menlos....

  • Tacitus
    Tacitus
    Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...

  • Margaret Thatcher
    Margaret Thatcher
    Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...

  • Henning von Tresckow
    Henning von Tresckow
    Generalmajor Herrmann Karl Robert "Henning" von Tresckow was a Major General in the German Wehrmacht who organized German resistance against Adolf Hitler. He attempted to assassinate Hitler in March 1943 and drafted the Valkyrie plan for a coup against the German government...

  • Leon Trotsky
    Leon Trotsky
    Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....

  • Karl Tschuppik
  • Dubravka Ugrešić
    Dubravka Ugrešic
    Dubravka Ugrešić is a Croatian writer who lives in the Netherlands.- Background and education:Ugrešić was born in 1949 in Kutina, SR Croatia, SFR Yugoslavia., She studied Comparative Literature and Russian Language and Literature at the University of Zagreb, pursuing parallel careers as a...

  • Miguel de Unamuno
    Miguel de Unamuno
    Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo was a Spanish essayist, novelist, poet, playwright and philosopher.-Biography:...

  • Pedro Henríquez Ureña
    Pedro Henríquez Ureña
    Pedro Henríquez Ureña was a Dominican intellectual, essayist, philosopher, humanist, philologist and literary critic.-Early works:Pedro Henríquez Ureña was born in Santo Domingo, the third of four siblings...

  • Paul Valéry
    Paul Valéry
    Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath...

  • Mario Vargas Llosa
    Mario Vargas Llosa
    Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian-Spanish writer, politician, journalist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate. Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading authors of his generation...

  • Evelyn Waugh
    Evelyn Waugh
    Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein
    Ludwig Wittgenstein
    Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...

  • Isoroku Yamamoto
    Isoroku Yamamoto
    was a Japanese Naval Marshal General and the commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet during World War II, a graduate of the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy and a student of Harvard University ....

  • Aleksandr Zinoviev
  • Carl Zuckmayer
    Carl Zuckmayer
    Carl Zuckmayer was a German writer and playwright.-Biography:Born in Nackenheim in Rheinhessen, he was four years old when his family moved to Mainz. With the outbreak of World War I, he finished school with a facilitated "emergency"-Abitur and volunteered for military service...

  • Stefan Zweig
    Stefan Zweig
    Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most famous writers in the world.- Biography :...



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