'It Brought Us This Far'

Self-knowledge is fine but some things are best left unexamined. “Why do you read so many books?” a reader asks. His assumption, never directly articulated, is that reading is compensation for the absence of something far more important. I suppose people have been facing such suspicions at least since Freud’s arrival on the scene. Busybodies flatter themselves by uncovering previously unsuspected motives in others. Think of it as amateur psychology practiced as a self-congratulating hobby.

One of my favorites among Clive James’ books is Late Readings, published in 2015, four years before his death from cancer. “Late” is redolent of what Henry James called “the distinguished thing.” James writes about the books he knows will be among the last he ever reads, including those by Joseph Conrad, Dr. Johnson, Anthony Powell and Olivia Manning – all superb choices. A line in his introduction comes to mind: “If you don’t know the exact moment when the lights will go out, you might as well read until they do.” That almost sounds like a pep talk. If something has worked for more than six decades, reliably supplying pleasure and learning, why stop now? James continues:

“Piled up, the books they wrote are not a necropolis. They are an arcadian pavilion with an infinite set of glittering, mirrored doorways to the unknown: which seems dark to us only because we will not be in it. We won’t be taking our knowledge any further, but it brought us this far.”