Claerwen James Recalls Compiling Fire of Joy With Her Late Father, Clive James

At The Guardian, Rachel Cooke interviews Claerwen Jame, who recalls compiling the forthcoming anthology, The Fire of Joy (Pan MacMillan) with her father, Clive James, just prior to his death. As Cooke notes, for "both father and daughter, this last project was a blessing, in the most complete sense of that word." Picking up from there: 

In the last years of his life, Clive lived in the house adjoining Claerwen’s in Cambridge, a permanently open door connecting her kitchen to his sitting room, a realm that became his entire world at the end. (This is where we are now: Claerwen, my friend of more than 25 years, at one side of the long table at which he worked, and me on the other, the pair of us surrounded by his books, pictures and photographs.) And there, they made the book together. Even while he slept – he could work for only an hour a time – Claerwen was painting designs for its cover, one eye on her brush, the other on him. “The thing I brought to it was my ignorance,” she says, with a laugh. “But I think my ignorance was important! I was receptive. I had nothing, except my enthusiasm. The book isn’t for the poetry aficionado necessarily. It’s just him, picking the bits he loves best and talking about them in a straightforward, simple way – and I was helpful with that because I felt the things he thought were completely obvious were not at all completely obvious.

Continue reading at The Guardian.