At the Pillars of Hercules

Non-Fiction 1973-1977

to Ian Hamilton

First published in 1979 by Faber & Faber, the first edition of At the Pillars of Hercules was available in hardback only. A second edition, unaltered but with a new Introduction, was published by Picador in 1998, in paperback only. If the original book had stayed in print another author might have been less likely to grab the title, but he would probably have done so anyway. There is no copyright on titles, and you can call your book War and Peace if you want to.

[Apparent subsequent rewrite — might not be Clive’s own words: “My second collection of critical essays, At the Pillars of Hercules was published in 1979 by Faber & Faber. The title is the name of a certain Soho pub, which has since closed down. The main topics are contemporary poetry, aesthetics and the theory and practice of criticism, the popular novel, and the literature of modern history and politics. Discussions range from the legacy of Auden and Larkin to Gore Vidal and Lord Longford. Republished in paperback by Picador, with a previously unpublished introduction.”]

Jacket Note (Faber edition) :

The main topics discussed in this second collection of Clive James’s critical essays are contemporary poetry ; aesthetics and the theory and practice of criticism ; the popular novel ; and the literature of modern history and politics. Among the writers discussed are Auden, Larkin, Lowell and Eliot; Gianfranco Contini, Randall Jarrell and Wittgenstein ; Raymond Chandler and Nigel Balchin ; Solzhenitsyn, the Crossman diaries and Lord Longford’s biography of Kennedy.

Reviewing The Metropolitan Critic, Jonathan Raban said in the New Statesman : ‘He is a superb describer, in easy conversational prose, of poetic effects ... assiduous, intelligent and marvellous at communicating his pleasure at what he likes’. Readers of periodicals ranging from the New Review to the New York Review of Books where these essays originally appeared will recognize these qualities.