May Week Was in June

(Unreliable Memoirs Continued)

by Clive James

Jonathan Cape, 1990, [First Edition], ISBN 0224027875, hardcover, dustjacket

Near Fine Condition, minor edge and shelf wear, no inscriptions (see photographs)

“May Week in June is the third part of Clive James’s not entirely reliable memoirs.  When we last met our hero in Falling Towards England, he was living hand-to-mouth existence while London was swinging its way into the Sixties.  Pembroke College, Cambridge, offered a way out, if not up…
At the freshmen’s drinks ‘it struck me on the spot that if the English have spent their lives preparing to fit into one of these places, then the only smart thing to do was not to bother about fitting in at all.’  And that included lectures.  Clive decided he’d done Donne, and threw himself into anything – film reviewing, writing poetry, falling in love (often) – anything, so long as it wasn’t on the curriculum.  So uncommitted was he to his work that when the exam results had him down as a 2:1, he thought it was a misprint.  It wasn’t, so he applied for a research grant to evaluate Shelley’s reading of the major Italian poets.  It seemed appropriate to go where Shelley had gone, and anyway Francoise was in Florence…”

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