A nose for the bogus.(Book Review)

The subtitle of As of This Writing, Clive James's new collection of literary and cultural criticism, is "The Essential Essays, 1968-2002." (1) It would be easy to condemn the adjective as hubristic: "essential" to whom? one might ask. But in fact the forty-seven pieces presented here, which deal with cultural icons ranging from Philip Larkin and Bertrand Russell to Germaine Greer and Federico Fellini, are of a remarkably high level and might without undue hyperbole be called essential--if not to the general reader then at least to the educated one. Good literary critics (and most of these essays are about literature) are rare, and, while James's enormous output, over a ...