Clive James, a Tireless Polymath Who Led With His Wit

Dwight Garner at the NY Times:

“A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing,” he wrote. “Those who lack humor are without judgment and should be trusted with nothing.”

He said of George W. Bush that he “should not be delivering a State of the Union address. He should be delivering pizza.” He compared Arnold Schwarzenegger’s torso to a “condom full of walnuts.” He made fun of his own looks, comparing himself to a bank robber who forgot to take the stocking off his head.

He told an editor, “Listen, if I wrote like that, I’d be you.” Reviewing a memoir by Leonid Brezhnev, he declared: “Here is a book so dull that a whirling dervish could read himself to sleep with it. If you were to recite even a single page in the open air, birds would fall out of the sky and dogs drop dead.”

more here.