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        Pete Atkin >> Words >> Cilve interview in WSJ
        
(Message started by: Kevin Cryan on Today at 12:10)

Title: Cilve interview in WSJ
Post by Kevin Cryan on Today at 12:10

The Wall Street Journal

Writer Clive James on a Boy’s Life in Post-War Australia (http://www.wsj.com/articles/writer-clive-james-on-a-boys-life-in-post-war-australia-1456334764)

The memoirist recalls drawing on bedroom walls and escaping through books

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/MN-AL353_CLIVE_8V_20160224114054.jpg
Clive James in the garden of his home in Cambridge, England, in 2015. PHOTO: ALICIA CANTER/THE GUARDIAN
Feb. 24, 2016 12:26 p.m. ET

Clive James, 76, is an Australian critic and author (http://www.wsj.com/articles/book-review-poetry-notebook-by-clive-james-1429225102) of 40 books, including “Unreliable Memoirs” and “Cultural Amnesia.” His latest book, “Sentenced to Life” (Liveright), is a collection of his poems. He spoke with Marc Myers.

Quote:

I never knew my father. During World War II, he went off to fight for Australia and wound up a prisoner in Japan. When he was freed in 1945, the Americans kindly offered to fly liberated Australian prisoners home on B-24s so they wouldn’t have to wait for a ship. My father’s plane was caught in a typhoon and crashed in Taiwan, killing everyone on board.

The only photo I have of my father and me is one with him cradling me as a baby in his arms. Naturally, my mother was devastated, but she brought me up not to blame anybody—not the Americans or the Japanese—and I never did.

I witnessed my mother’s sadness for years, but couldn’t do much about it. I was an only child and the man of the house, and yet I was helpless. The experience did teach me that chance governs life.

read on (http://www.wsj.com/articles/writer-clive-james-on-a-boys-life-in-post-war-australia-1456334764)

Kevin Cryan