The Remake — Clive James

Twenty years before, in the age of polymorphous perversity, I had played it straight. Now I wanted to know. To find myself through yielding. To be irritated by the revelation of the Moles perfectly proportioned, rainwater-pure corporeal presence. Hindering my commitment to this idea, however, was . . . an unavoidable suspicion that I would have felt the same way if exposed to, say, the inner thigh of Linda Lovelace. Maybe I was just horny. Joel Court had problems. He'd lost his wife, his mistress, quite possibly his career as an astronomical wizard, and had ended up living with Chance Jenolan, to whom success was a way of life, and whose Barbican fortress was protected by a maze that would shame the Minotaur. To make matters worse, there was the Mole. Her heavenly body outshone all the celestial manifestations Joel had ever seen. Pretty soon, he would not be able to bear having her out of his sights . . . 'The Remake is a consideration of the artistic and the media-star lifestyle, full of brilliant observation.' London Evening Standard Magazine 'As sharp as a tack and as clever as eleven wagonloads of monkeys.' Guardian 'The reader is kept busy catching the glancing reflections, fitting together bits of puzzle and enjoying jokes. There is much that cries out to be quoted. Clive James's latest book is funny, serious, challenging, annoying, iconoclastic, elitist, erudite and erotic.' Adelaide Advertiser 'The Remake truly floored me. Very few books have forced me to compare form and content as powerfully as this novel and I use the word novel with caution. Dialogue, description, plot and situation, Clive James has mastered them all. Eloquent and erudite, he uses words with such ease, grace and effectiveness that levels of language and meaning are grasped in gestalt; a phrase can be a word.' Jerusalem Post