Australian polymath speaks candidly about his illness to the BBC, saying 'I'm a man who is approaching his terminus'
Clive James, the broadcaster and writer, told the BBC he may never be well enough to travel back to his native Sydney. Photograph: Eamonn Mccabe
The prolific writer and critic Clive James, who has long guarded his family's privacy, has let it be known that he is losing his two-year struggle with leukaemia and may never see his native Sydney again. "I'm getting near the end; I'm a man who is approaching his terminus," he said.
"I've been really ill for two and a half years. I was diagnosed with leukaemia, then I had COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease], which is a fancy name for emphysema, and my immune system packed up. And that's just the start. I almost died four times and I swore to myself if I can just get through this winter, I'd feel better. And I got through the winter and here it is a lovely sunny day and guess what, I don't feel better," said the author of at least 34 novels, long poems, collections of essays and criticism, five volumes of autobiography – and counting.
James, who is 72 and has lived in Britain for 50 years but has never abandoned his Australian passport, was speaking in an interview with BBC Radio 4's Meeting Myself Coming Back to be aired on Saturday night.
Details of his remarks, made as he watches archive footage from his long and combative career in print and on air, were published on Thursday and instantly disseminated by forms of media unimaginable when James first pioneered a new kind of highbrow TV criticism for the Observer in the 1970s.
A spokesman later downplayed the comments and said the interview had "sounded much less doom-laden than it does when transcribed", adding: "Clive is in fact in reasonable shape and is looking forward to years of working."
Formerly an 80-a-day smoker (he boasted of daily filling a hub cap with butts) and hard drinker, the critic with a string of popular TV talkshows to his name has been treated at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge (his wife, Prue Shaw, is a university don) for B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukaemia as well as obstructive pulmonary disease.
"I've been so sick I'm not allowed to fly," he said. "You couldn't get enough oxygen aboard a plane to get me to Sydney. I used to be in Australia for five or six times a year but now I can't go. The wistfulness is really building up and I'm facing the possibility I might never see Sydney again."
Full story at The Guardian
"I've been really ill for two and a half years. I was diagnosed with leukaemia, then I had COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease], which is a fancy name for emphysema, and my immune system packed up. And that's just the start. I almost died four times and I swore to myself if I can just get through this winter, I'd feel better. And I got through the winter and here it is a lovely sunny day and guess what, I don't feel better," said the author of at least 34 novels, long poems, collections of essays and criticism, five volumes of autobiography – and counting.
James, who is 72 and has lived in Britain for 50 years but has never abandoned his Australian passport, was speaking in an interview with BBC Radio 4's Meeting Myself Coming Back to be aired on Saturday night.
Details of his remarks, made as he watches archive footage from his long and combative career in print and on air, were published on Thursday and instantly disseminated by forms of media unimaginable when James first pioneered a new kind of highbrow TV criticism for the Observer in the 1970s.
A spokesman later downplayed the comments and said the interview had "sounded much less doom-laden than it does when transcribed", adding: "Clive is in fact in reasonable shape and is looking forward to years of working."
Formerly an 80-a-day smoker (he boasted of daily filling a hub cap with butts) and hard drinker, the critic with a string of popular TV talkshows to his name has been treated at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge (his wife, Prue Shaw, is a university don) for B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukaemia as well as obstructive pulmonary disease.
"I've been so sick I'm not allowed to fly," he said. "You couldn't get enough oxygen aboard a plane to get me to Sydney. I used to be in Australia for five or six times a year but now I can't go. The wistfulness is really building up and I'm facing the possibility I might never see Sydney again."
Full story at The Guardian
1 comment:
Clive James definitely ranks as one of my humanist heroes (despite the fact I know from his writings he hates some of my other heroes).
Every essay on his Internet site is worth reading to capture his range, humour, and intellect. I think of him as a clever Hitchens (which is not meant as a slight at all against Hitchens).
His site is at: http://www.clivejames.com/
One of the few books that has significantly changed the way I think about the world is Clive's essay collection in Cultural Amnesia - that book should be on the secondary school curriculum: humanity shines through it, from some of the worst places and times in our recent history, and his compassionate championship of classical liberalism would be a great foil for the Gramsci-fication of children that otherwise happens in our state schools.
Such a pity to see he's had to become a recluse, and he's torturing himself going over all he thinks he's done wrong: there are not many men whose 'rights' could get close to his output, or his gruff charm.
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