May Week Was in June

Unreliable Memoirs #3

by Clive James

‘Arriving in Cambridge on my first day as an undergraduate, I could see nothing except a cold white October mist. At the age of twenty-four I was a complete failure, with nothing to show for my life except a few poems nobody wanted to publish in book form.’ Falling Toward England – the second volume of Clive James`s Unreliable Memoirs – was meant to be the last. Thankfully, that`s not the case. In Unrelaible Memoirs III, Clive details his time at Cambridge, including film reviewing, writing poetry, falling in love (often), and marrying (once). `Every line is propelled by a firecracker witticism` London Review of Books `He turns phrases, mixes together cleverness and clownishness, and achieves a fluency and a level of wit that make his pages truly shimmer... May Week Was In June is vintage James` Financial Times

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, Autobiography, Humor, Australia, British Literature

245 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

An expatriate Australian broadcast personality and author of cultural criticism, memoir, fiction, travelogue and poetry. Translator of Dante.

Reviews

[Fiona MacDonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

My new favourite writer. Numerous accounts of King’s College in the 60s where very little has changed even now. Clive James is a tonic to me. Dry, sarcastic yet utterly eloquent and sublime. And also such a comfort.

[Mikey Campling · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read the first 2 books of Unreliable Memoirs many years ago and absolutely loved them, so when I found this I snapped it up. Unfortunately, the humour of the earlier books is scarce in this one. Clive James drowns the personal story in pretentious, literary twaddle and the overall effect is self-important and heavy handed. This is a tale of someone who seems to have fallen on their feet, does well at Cambridge, and then repeatedly claims that it's all a fluke because they never put in any work. It's a shame because Clive James knows how to tell a good story in a way that will split your sides. I ploughed on to the end of this book but I was tempted not to, because there isn't much to keep the reader turning pages. Sorry Clive.

[Bill Porter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Peaks and troughs. Hilarious alternating with turgid.

[Piper · Rating 4 out of 5]

This made Cambridge seem so fun it almost gaslit me into thinking I should go back for a Masters and never study until I remembered this all went down in the 60s

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost five stars because I did laugh out loud a fair bit, but not quite as funny as the previous two volumes of his memoirs. This one describes Clive James's time as a student at Cambridge University, along with several foreign trips in and out of term, and a bizarre experience making a film for a friend. He writes for and performs in the Cambridge Footlights, makes friends who were to find fame later on, begins his journalistic career, and rounds it off with his marriage. Also, as an aside, I was surprised into shedding two tears a couple of paragraphs before the end, and not due to laughter. So be warned!

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clive James as a student at Pembroke College Cambridge studiously avoiding anything remotely connected to the course he is supposed to be taking. Interposed between trips to Italy, Footlights and poetry this tale of a very lucky young man unfolds at breakneck pace. Very funny in bits...

[Pat Nino · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know I keep giving books 5 stars but I just like them so much.

Volume III of unreliable memoirs covers James’ time at Cambridge. There were sections where I thought “I am not enjoying this and it is a real slog to read”, but yet again, once I got used to his prose, I was wrapped around James’ finger. As a university student involved in the theatre, I felt very seen by this text. His humour is addictive, and he manages to slip pieces of divinely inspired wisdom about life in between passages that would make a dead man cry with laughter.

Strongly, strongly recommend to my friends in StuJo.

[Glen Engel-Cox · Rating 3 out of 5]

This third volume of unreliable memoirs picks up where the previous volume (Falling Towards England) let off. James, in these books, is interesting, yet not as funny, at least to me, as it seems the things he is describing should be. I definitely need to give his fiction a try.

The nice thing about reading a writer's biography like this is to realize that you are not alone. It is much too easy for me to think that I am the only one with trouble concentrating on the matter at hand instead of flirting with one passion after the other.

[Dickon Edwards · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started this as part of my intention to read all 5 James memoirs, but abandoned it halfway through. Partly because I'm keen to get on with reading more fiction, but also because I was becoming irritated with James's lechery over women in this particular book.

It's good that he's so honest about himself, often at the cost of reader sympathy, but this aspect of his young life becomes repetitive and dull.

I think one problem may be that the James writing this book, in about 1990, is the ubiquitous TV presenter of wry travel shows and chat shows, but also of a lot of not very good 'sneering from a desk' clip fests - notoriously ones which poked fun at Japanese TV. While the writer of Unreliable Memoirs was a witty TV critic yet to make programmes himself, the writer of May Week Was In June is a Jeremy Beadle-style TV celebrity fighting to be taken seriously as the intellectual he once wanted to be (a fight which he only just won in his last decade). As a result, his youthful obsessions with women are given a kind a sub-Proustian interrogation - painfully so. Clive James is not Proust. But here he's not even the Clive James of Unreliable Memoirs, when he had nothing to lose.

Then again, perhaps it's also because a memoir of childhood is just more universal. Whereas a memoir of being a student at Cambridge - by definition - is more select. As his big ambition was to get into the place, and that happens on page 1, the self-deprecation has gone.

It's just another celebrity memoir now, and those are all the same. Pretending to be humble while being careful to build the brand, and being careful not to libel anyone. When he refers to a fellow Australian student at Cambridge, 'Romaine Rand', a woman who goes on to become a 'world-famous feminist', my patience left me. I hate that fake renaming of real people. Why not just write an autobiographical novel?

I think I've had enough of memoirs. Fiction is more honest.

[Jonathan Corfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some books you devour with relish and with an almost orgiastic fervour. You know the end of the book is coming and you can't stop yourself careering toward its conclusion. You'll feel empty and bereft - the book absorbed you, held you in thrall with every delicious line sending you on to the next delicious line and then it's gone.
Over.
Fuck it.
...
...
...
Fortunately, this is the third in a series of Clive James' autobiographies and I have only read this and the first one.
Clive James worked out fairly early on that if you're the cleverest man in the room then it probably pays to be self-effacing and let your work speak for itself lest you come across as some sort of smartarse. But when it came to wit VCL James could have won Olympic medals. He could throw a lampoon through anyone who had enough hubris and not enough talent like Zeus casually lobbing thunderbolts or Brett Lee bowling yorkers. The unfortunate victim would be happily making crap television or witless political promises and the first they would realise they'd fallen victim to Clive James hatchet job would be when they looked down to see their shoes filling up with blood and a knowing smile on James' face.
He had other talents too: he was a multilingual reader in English, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian and Japanese; he was an accomplished student of the tango, both vertical and horizontal apparently, but his ability to write was his shining jewel. Literary criticism, fiction, travel writing, poetry and biography in screeds. All of it of uniformly excellent quality.
His output, fortunately and thankfully for me, was both unique and prodigious. That there is a finite amount of his work means there will never be enough though.
Fuck it.

[Leo Margetts]

Clive goes to Pembroke College, Cambridge to study. Here he joined the Footlights review, participated in film reviewing, wrote poetry and fell in love on several occasions. The book also details his period as a literary editor of Granta, the articles he wrote for The New Statesman and the period when he took Footlights to the Edinburgh Fringe. Then during May week, which was not only in June but was two weeks long, he married. This book follows Unreliable Memoirs and Falling Towards England. Clive James has published two novels, Brilliant Creatures and The Remake, four books of literary criticism and four mock-epic poems.

[Lloyd · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my third Clive James book in as many months. There was much to like (I particularly enjoyed James's reflections on the protests of 1968 towards the book's close), but it took me an absolute age to finish. Having had to abandon Karl Ove Knausgård's sixth and final volume mid-way through a few months ago, I can only conclude that you really can have too much of a good thing. Or that I watch far too much TV.

[Perry Middlemiss · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the end of the previous volume James had finished two years mooching about in London and had been finally accepted for an undergraduate degree at Cambridge University. This volume follows his time there. He quickly finds Eric Idle and the Footlights and his future life starts to get sketched in. Ostensibly reading English he reads everything bar the prescribed texts, starts to learn Italian and then French, skips classes, drinks and smokes too much, and throws himself headfirst into the University dramatics society. He barely scrapes through his exams but is accepted into a PhD program, only to carry on exactly as he was before. By the end of the book “Literary London” starts to beckon as he begins to get published in various small London periodicals. James’s humour, which was once fresh and free, now seems a bit old and forced, and the short, sharp prose of the earlier volumes has become overly verbose. You could be forgiven for thinking this was written under contract rather than personal desire. R: 3.2/5.0

[Ginni · Rating 3 out of 5]

The third in the collected autobiographies volume I got out, in order to re-read ‘Unreliable Memoirs.’ This was also amusing and interesting, but not as funny as the first two. James is coming into his own here, at Cambridge University, and enjoying his first successes as a writer and as a producer of Footlights. His self-deprecating style doesn’t always come off.

[Nicola · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very self-conscious and became quite 'precious' in the volume of name-dropping. Yes, he was there, he was it, he was experienced, but the narrative flow was clunky. His desperate search for sex, less than for love, also became tiresome. We all know that men's genitals and their thoughts can be extremely importunate, but talk about flogging a tired (and sometimes non-performing) horse!

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clive reviewed it himself at the end and I really can't improve on his words! Enjoyed immersing myself in the times and Mr James's witty and poetic language. The understanding that the memoirs are unreliable make them bittersweet. Nice to hear more about Jonathan Lynn and a thinly-disguised Germaine Greer.

[Derek Bridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

The next installment. The usual japes. But profundities abound with credit given to Proust. And good advice comes too as he learns his writing craft. Linear sentences, for example. Structure: set up, early pay-off, development, late pay-off, closing number. Thought-provoking.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book you must read as if he is reading it to you. Confirms to me I would not have been happy in Oxbridge. I can see a lot of myself in him but writ small. A flawed character, subject to whims and temptation with a great need to convince himself he is improving himself.

[Mezzie Elen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book but sadly the humour of the first two parts of these memoirs is hard to find... but I persevered because he still pulled out some fabulous observations.
Glad I finished it but I won’t reread... my love for Jane’s lays in his poetry these days .

[Darla Ebert · Rating 1 out of 5]

Clive James has a clever writing style but writes from the narrow standpoint of a group of people possessing and utilizing in-jokes long past. I wish there had been more explanations of a straightforward presentation so the reader could be in on the jokes too

[David Short · Rating 4 out of 5]

And this clever, funny man goes on...

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as the previous two volumes, but still worth reading. I really liked Clive James, but he doesn't come across as a particularly nice character in this book.

[Chris Warren · Rating 3 out of 5]

It would have been four stars but I read this after reading North Face of Soho – too much...

[Karen Reynolds · Rating 2 out of 5]

A reread for me but seems out of place now with it’s references to pretty girls and homosexuals. Different times!

[Margery Osborne · Rating 5 out of 5]

very enjoyable although not at the level of hilarious of volume 1

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The third (and, the author tells us, final - although there were actually two more to come) volume of Unreliable Memoirs finds Clive James at Cambridge in the sixties. Reading everything except what he was supposed to be reading, and writing poetry, articles, song lyrics, travel pieces and sketches for Footlights (of which he soon finds himself president), but precious little in the form of essays or papers, he cuts a fascinating path through the university. Most of the time he is perfecting his writing style, learning from the great German aphorists to set up perfect sentence after perfect sentence. In this of course he succeeds brilliantly. May Week was in June is the perfect product of all that work: beautiful prose, brilliant character sketches of his contemporaries, honest self reflection, and wonderfully told comic anecdotes (the university ski club trip to Austria had me gasping for breath as I laughed uncontrollably). Great stuff!

[Thavakumar Kandiahpillai · Rating 1 out of 5]

I haven't read any of Clive James' other books, and was expecting the humour I enjoyed in his TV shows. Also, I am not a big fan of theater. This is a personal story of his days in university, centred on his experiences doing revues. Therefore, it was not a subject I readily appreciated. The fact that I bought this book in a overstock sale at a fraction of it's original price should have perhaps cautioned me.

[Hilary · Rating 3 out of 5]

The third volume of memoirs covers his time at Cambridge doing an English degree, taking part in Footlights, contributing to Granta and spending time with his girlfriend in Florence. All this left precious little time for study but James scrapes a 2.1 and succeeds in getting a grant to do a PhD. Although this has its moments James doesn't wear his learning lightly and despite the occasional flash of brilliant wit I found this less enjoyable than the first two volumes to the extent that I found myself skim-reading some sections. However when he's at his best there are few to touch him and for this reason I will read the fourth volume in the hopes of a return to full form.

[M-n · Rating 5 out of 5]

funny erudite educational by osmosis evocative well worth reading. James has such a clever mind as does his fellow aussie Barry Humphries who has great interviews on Youtube and radio worth listening to. Culture is alive and well and came from Oz or will be as long as these two comic watchdogs of the most benign sort are still alive.

[Pete Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

More auto-biography from James. Simply brilliant.