One year ago, on November 24, 2019, the great man of letters, comedian, and raconteur, Clive James, died.  

I won’t even pretend to be impartial. Ever since I was fourteen, every sentence I’ve ever written has been an attempt to write like Clive James. His command of the language, his ability to balance a sentence, his promiscuous and prodigious consumption of both popular and high culture—all of it I found exhilarating.