I work on the assumption, or let it be the fear, that the reader will stop reading if I stop being interesting.
Clive JamesRead
The provincial intellectual is doomed to arguing at low level... there is still no Australian literary world, not in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide. It is some consolation to realise that there is no literary world in Birmingham or Los Angeles either. I have heard there is one in Montreal, but I don't believe it. The literary world is in London and New York, the only cities big enough to sustain magazines which can afford to reject copy.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses the limitations of provincial literary scenes compared to major cultural hubs.
Clive James reflects on the disparity between literary communities in smaller cities and the significant literary culture found in metropolitan centers like London and New York. He suggests that intellectual debates in less urbanized areas are often superficial, and only in large cities can a robust literary scene thrive, allowing for meaningful critique and rejection of work.
Themes
LiteratureCultureCitiesIntellectualismArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on regional versus global literature, one might use this quote to highlight the limitations faced by local authors.
More from Clive James
All quotes →Television is simultaneously blamed, often by the same people, for worsening the world and for being powerless to change it.
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Murray sounds like a blindfolded man riding a unicycle on the rim of the pit of doom, the men actually facing the danger are all so taciturn that you might as well try interviewing the cars themselves.
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Prejudices are useless. Call Los Angeles any dirty name you like - Six Suburbs in Search of a City, Paradise with a Lobotomy, anything - but the fact remains that you are already living in it before you get there
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Anyone afraid of what he thinks television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world.
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I was wrong, however, to suppose that Sellers thought the world revolved around him. He thought the cosmos did too, and history, and the fates... Like every egomaniac, he behaved as if everybody else spent their day being as interested in him as he was.
Clive JamesRead
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