That being said, I do believe the "noob experience" is improving, and the community Clojure fosters is inviting and welcoming to newbies, as far as I've seen.
I've begun work on a tutorial to get people up and running with Clojure, but I will be recommending Emacs in it. As someone in the comments on the blog noted, if someone's goal with Clojure is to crank out a web app in 24 hours, they've come to the wrong place. Emacs enriches the experience, and I truly don't think it is as daunting as it is often made out to be. Gaining basic productivity in Emacs, even if not excellent productivity, takes little time, and the benefits of using Emacs seem large to me.
Regardless, the sentiment expressed here is important to consider. There should be a sanctioned IDE for Clojure, and it shouldn't just be Emacs and clojure-mode.el + Lein, at least not to start. Along with clojure.jar, I'd like to see Leibke's clj script packaged and promoted. That way, like with python, irb and newlisp, you can download and immediately get started with a functional REPL to see if you like the language before investing the time in setting up the ultimate IDE.
And yes, documentation. Please, documentation. It's in the style of LISP to have little to none documentation in code, as the code should explain itself. And it certainly should, but a little exlanation here and there can only help to enlighten those not as familiar with the language and save the time of those in a hurry.
But now is an exciting tine for getting into Clojure. Don't let the initial challenge of getting into it deter you!