Books: Visions Before Midnight | clivejames.com

On “Current” and “Out-of-Print” Books
The Unreliable Memoirs series
Collections of Essays
- The Metropolitan Critic
  - Foreword to the New Edition
  - Foreword
  - The Metropolitan Critic
  - Big Medicine
  - When the Gloves Are Off
  - Everything's Rainbow
  - Settling for Dust
  - John Berryman: On the Dream Songs
  - John Berryman: On Love & Fame
  - Roethke: On his Collected Poems
  - Roethke: On his Selected Letters
  - An Instrument to Measure Spring With
  - Keyes and Douglas
  - Sniper Style
  - Walker
  - Augustan Wattle
  - Seamus Heaney
  - The Wheeze Incarnadined
  - Roy Fuller's Magisterial Thumb
  - Love, Help and the Performing Self
  - F. R. Leavis in America
  - D.H. Lawrence in transit
  - The Perpetual Promise of James Agee
  - A Dinosaur at Sunset
  - The Last Amateur
  - Richard Neville's Play Power
  - After the Oz Trial
  - Another Dreamer
  - The Green American
  - Getting Married Later
  - An Absolute Lady
  - Aquarius, Prisoner of Sex
  - Tom Wolfe's The Mid-Atlantic Man
  - A Whole Gang of Noise
  - Rough Beast
  - He Didn't Stifle
  - The New Lost
  - The Fascist Intellectuals
  - Tell England: or, In the Penal Colony
  - A Poor Report on Violence
  - Supplementary Viewpoints
- At the Pillars of Hercules
  - Introduction to the Picador Edition
  - Foreword
  - Auden (i) On Epistle to a Godson
  - Auden (ii) On Forewords and Afterwords
  - Auden (iii) On his Death
  - Robert Lowell's Marble Chips
  - Philip Larkin (i) Wolves of Memory
  - Philip Larkin (ii) Smaller and Clearer
  - Philip Larkin (iii) Davie's Larkin
  - Philip Larkin (iv) The North Window
  - Supplier of Verses: John Betjeman
  - Kenneth Slessor's Importance
  - The Poetry of Edmund Wilson
  - After Such Knowledge: T. S. Eliot
  - In Homage to Gianfranco Contini
  - Poetry's Ideal Critic: Randall Jarrell
  - Wittgenstein's Dream
  - The Sherlockologists
  - The Country Behind the Hill
  - The Effective Intelligence of N. Balchin
  - Bitter Seeds: Solzhenitsyn
  - It is of a Windiness: Lillian Hellman
  - The Watcher in Spanish
  - Dick's Diaries: Richard Crossman
  - Unpatriotic Gore: Gore Vidal
  - Kennedy's Ideal Biographer
  - Mailer's Marilyn
  - Count Zero Splits the Infinite
- From the Land of Shadows
  - Misia & All Paris
  - Bernard Levin: Book Two
  - Doubting Castle
  - Only Human: On Nuremberg
  - From Log Cabin to Log Cabin
  - Little Malcolm & His Struggle...
  - Hard-core Gore
  - Go Back to the Cold!
  - In our Graham Greenery
  - Pensée Persons
  - Look Forward in Mild Irritation
  - A Blizzard of Tiny Kisses
  - Waugh's Last Stand
  - Fannikins' Cunnikin
  - In Their Flying Machines
  - The Examined Life of Kingsley Amis
  - On Larkin's Wit
  - Catacomb Graffiti
  - Grigson's Satirical Tradition
  - All the Facts
  - Flights of Angels
  - As a Matter of Tact
  - These Staggering Questions
  - Nabokov's Grand Folly
  - Pushkin is the Sea
  - Voznesensky's Case
  - Transparent Petropolis
  - Voices from the Pit
  - The Road to Berlin
  - Big Book from Screwsville
  - A State of Boredom
  - Awkward Laughter
- Snakecharmers in Texas
  - Introduction
  - A Death in Life
  - Elaborate Brute
  - On Barry Humphries
  - The Boy from Brisbane
  - Les Is More
  - A Dream of Zinc Cream
  - The First Iron Lady
  - Ruins Without Value
  - Ground-Level Entrance
  - You Little Bobby-Dazzler
  - On the Library Coffee-Table
  - Montale’s Capital Book
  - On Montale’s Prose
  - Elastic White Thighs
  - Necessary Inhibitions
  - Lively Copy
  - An Affair of Sanity
  - ’Tis Vidocq!
  - Kung-Fu Wit
  - Boys Will Be Girls
  - Pure Genius
  - Boomtown Saint
  - N.V. Rampant Meets Martin Amis
  - The Wrong Lady Diana
  - Out Into the Light
  - The Queen in California, 1983
  - Dedicated Follower
  - Ugh!
  - The New Diaghilev
  - Making a Whore Movie
  - Pictures in Silver
  - Ice-Dancers
  - The Sound of the Crucible
  - Close Thing in Portugal
  - Holders of the Golden Cross
  - Riviera Daydream
  - Nearly Mansell
  - Campaign Down the Drain
  - Underdog at Overlord
  - The March of History
  - Around the World in One Pair of Shoes
- The Dreaming Swimmer
  - Introduction
  - Not Drowning but Waving
  - Somewhere becoming rain
  - Last Will and Testament
  - Galway Kinnell's Great Poem
  - The Australian Poetic Republic
  - Your Space or Mine?
  - Fanfare for a Big Yin
  - Sarah Raphael
  - We Shall Be Re-released
  - He that Played the Fool
  - For Terence Kilmartin
  - Pit-bull Poodle
  - The Words Count
  - Serious Brain Operation
  - Making Programmes the World Wants
  - Preaching to the Converted
  - On the Eve of Disaster
  - Chip, Chip, Chip
  - Jet-lag in Tokyo
  - The Light Well
  - Bring me the sweat of Gabriela Sabatini
  - Drama in the Soviet Union
  - Go back to the Opal Sunset
  - Budge Up
  - The Artificial Horizon
  - Last night the sea ... Greta Scacchi
  - What Happened to Auden
  - Incredible Two-headed Man
  - Finally Meeting Frankie
  - Staying Sane Aloft
  - L.A. Lore
  - News Fantasy
  - Sidney Carton's Double Life
- Even as We Speak
  - Introduction
  - The All of Orwell
  - Hitler's Unwitting Exculpator
  - Postscript to Goldhagen
  - Mark Twain, Journalist
  - Casanova Comes Again
  - B. Russell Struggles After Heaven
  - Getting Larkin's Number
  - Karl's Strange Engine
  - Pier Paolo Pain in the Neck
  - Mondo Fellini
  - Who Was that Masked Man?
  - Plain Clothes Police State
  - Requiem
  - Postscript to a Requiem
  - My Life in Pop
  - Peter Cook
  - Incident at St Denis
  - The Year It Didn't Happen
  - Destination Europe
  - A Voice is Born
  - Les Murray and his Master Spirits
  - Running Beside Ron Clarke
  - On the List
  - Up Here from Down There
  - George Russell: A Reminiscence
  - Preface to an Australian Classic
  - Let's Talk about Us
  - Introduction
  - Hamlet in Perspective
  - Bring Back the Overqualified
  - Presenting the R. Dimbleby Award
  - Anzac Day Dawn Service Address
  - Introduction
  - The Gentle Slope to Castalia
  - Noble Talking Heads
  - Beachcomber's Stuff
  - Opening, Sydney Olympics, 2000
  - Carry That Torch
  - Thorpie, Hoogie and The Golden Lolly
  - Prelude to Cathy
  - Second Week in Sydney
  - Olympic Crescendo
  - Olympics Finale
- The Meaning of Recognition
- The Revolt of the Pendulum
  - Introduction
  - The Question of Karl Kraus
  - John Bayley's Daily Bread
  - Kingsley and the Women
  - Canetti, Man of Mystery
  - Camille Paglia Burns for Poetry
  - The Guidebook Detectives
  - Denis Healey's Classic Memoir
  - Exit Roth's Ghost
  - Flight from the Destroyer
  - Saying Famous Things
  - Insult to the Language
  - Perfectly Bad Sentence
  - Happiness Writes White
  - All Stalkers Kill
  - In Praise of Tommy Cooper
  - A Microphone for the Audience
  - Best Eaten Cold
  - Velvet Shackles of a Reputation
  - Don’t Hold Your Breath, Argentina
  - White Shorts of Leni Riefenstahl
  - Made in Britain?
  - On American Movie Critics
  - Show Me the Horror
  - The Measure of A. D. Hope
  - Robert Hughes Remembers
  - Modern Australian Painting
  - A Question for Diamond Jim
  - Exit John Howard
  - ABR 300
  - The Voice of John Anderson
  - Bea Miles, Vagrant
  - Niki Lauda Wins Going Slowly
  - Damon Hill's Bravest Day
  - Going On in Edinburgh
  - Gateway to Infinity
  - Back on the Road
  - Lure of the Lyrics
  - Five Favourites
  - Jonathan James-Moore
  - Ian Adam
  - Richard Drewett
  - Alan Coren
  - Pat Kavanagh
  - Music in the Dark
  - Starting with Sludge
- “Best Of” essay collections
Latest Readings
Cultural Amnesia
- Introduction
- A Note on the Text
- Acknowledgements
- Overture: Vienna
- Anna Akhmatova
- Peter Altenberg
- Louis Armstrong
- Raymond Aron
- Walter Benjamin
- Marc Bloch
- Jorge Luis Borges
- Robert Brasillach
- Sir Thomas Browne
- Albert Camus
- Dick Cavett
- Paul Celan
- Chamfort
- Coco Chanel
- Charles Chaplin
- Nirad C Chaudhuri
- G K Chesterton
- Jean Cocteau
- Gianfranco Contini
- Benedetto Croce
- Tony Curtis
- Ernst Robert Curtius
- Miles Davis
- Sergei Diaghilev
- Pierre Drieu la Rochelle
- Alfred Einstein
- Duke Ellington
- Federico Fellini
- W C Fields
- F Scott Fitzgerald
- Gustave Flaubert
- Sigmund Freud
- Egon Friedell
- François Furet
- Charles de Gaulle
- Edward Gibbon
- Terry Gilliam
- Josef Goebbels
- Witold Gombrowicz
- William Hazlitt
- Hegel
- Heinrich Heine
- Adolf Hitler
- Ricarda Huch
- Ernst Jünger
- Franz Kafka
- John Keats
- Leszek Kołakowski
- Alexandra Kollontai
- Heda Margolius Kovaly
- Karl Kraus
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
- Norman Mailer
- Nadezhda Mandelstam
- Golo Mann
- Heinrich Mann
- Michael Mann
- Thomas Mann
- Mao Zedong
- Chris Marker
- John McCloy
- Zinka Milanov
- Czeslaw Milosz
- Eugenio Montale
- Montesquieu
- Alan Moorehead
- Paul Muratov
- Lewis Namier
- Grigory Ordzhonokidze
- Octavio Paz
- Alfred Polgar
- Beatrix Potter
- Jean Prévost
- Marcel Proust
- Edgar Quinet
- Marcel Reich-Ranicki
- Jean-François Revel
- Richard Rhodes
- Rainer Maria Rilke
- Virginio Rognoni
- Ernesto Sabato
- Edward Said
- Sainte-Beuve
- José Saramago
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Erik Satie
- Arthur Schnitzler
- Sophie Scholl
- Wolf Jobst Siedler
- Manès Sperber
- Tacitus
- Margaret Thatcher
- Henning von Tresckow
- Leon Trotsky
- Karl Tschuppik
- Dubrava Ugrešić
- Miguel de Unamuno
- Pedro Henriquez Ureña
- Paul Valéry
- Mario Vargas Llosa
- Evelyn Waugh
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Isoroku Yamamoto
- Aleksandr Zinoviev
- Carl Zuckmayer
- Stefan Zweig
- Eckstein and the Egyptian Kinghopper
Poetry Notebook
- Introduction
- Acknowledgements
- Listening to the Flavour
- Five Favourite Poetry Books
- The Arrow Has Not Two Points
- Meeting MacNeice
- Little Low Heavens
- On a Second Reading
- Poetry Archive Tour
- The Necessary Minimum
- A Deeper Consideration
- Product Placement in Modern Poetry
- Technique’s Marginal Centrality
- A Stretch of Verse
- The Donaghy Negotiation
- There You Come Home
- Interior Music
- Part II: Interlude (prologue)
- John Updike’s Poetic Finality
- Stephen Edgar Stays Perfect
- Poetry Heaven, Election Hell
- Les Murray’s Palatial New Shed
- Talking to Posterity: Peter Porter
- Elegance in Overalls: Christian Wiman
- Michael Longley Blends In
- Spectator Diary
- Building the Sound of Sense
- Part II: Interlude (epilogue)
- Trumpets at Sunset
Books of Television Criticism
Other Non-Fiction
- A Point of View
  - Introduction (BBC)
  - BBC Interview
  - Attack of the Wheelie Bins
  - The Mind's Construction in the Face
  - Fidgets on the March
  - Flying People, Flagrant Piffle
  - Nob Voices, Yob Voices
  - Because She's Worth It
  - Going for Gold
  - Black Destiny
  - Torture on 24
  - Congratulations!
  - Man-made Beauty
  - Reflections on a Diamond Skull
  - Glider Shoes
  - Wimbledon Wisdom
  - Helplessly Advanced
  - Harry Potter Envy
  - Smoking the Memory
  - Desirable Devices
  - Click on the Icon
  - Clams Are Happy
  - Princes into Battle
  - Private Life
  - State of Law
  - Pedal Power
  - Terminal Terminal
  - Right on the Money
  - Legal Dilemmas
  - Instructions to the Sea
  - Snoop and Amy
  - Gaffes
  - How Rich is Rich?
  - Changing the Government
  - Robin the Hood
  - Bad Language
  - Glamourising terror
  - Writer's Room
  - National Identity
  - Wrap It Up
  - Jesus
  - New Year Prediction
  - The Speeding Judge
  - High-Priced Porn
  - Bright Side of the Cane Toad
  - Reputational Damage
  - Britain Has Talent
  - London Underground
  - Sheer Poetry
  - Expensive Mistakes
  - Feminism and Democracy
  - Newsflash from the Far East
  - The Golf-Ball Potato Crisp
  - On Strike
  - High Road to Xanadu
  - The Man on the Fourth Plinth
  - Blog de Jour
  - Spirit of the Game
  - Impact
  - Hermie's Ghost
  - Option Swamp
  - Talking About Their Generation
  - Conclusion
- Flying Visits
- Fame in the 20th Century
Novels

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Visions Before Midnight

Visions Before Midnight: Cape HB 1977

Cape HB 1977

Visions Before Midnight: Picador PB 1981

Picador PB 1981

Television Criticism from the Observer 1972–76

To Pete Atkin

Dreams out of the ivory gate, and visions before midnight.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE