Peter Conrad’s 2004 Boyer Lectures transfer beautifully to the page. His affection for puns and wordplay (which, he notes, ‘don’t work on the radio, you need to see the way the word is spelled’) may inspire some wry smiles in readers of Tales of Two Hemispheres.
Conrad, a Taswegian who went to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship in 1968, now divides his time between London and New York. He has taught English literature in Christ Church, Oxford, since 1973 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Tales of Two Hemispheres is the work of an expat with an eye that has been critical of this nation at times. It is this facility that allows criticism of Australia with depth and without malice.
Conrad doesn’t completely reject the comments of Henry Kingsley in 1865 when he called Australia ‘[a] scentless cesspool for a vast quantity of nameless rubbish’. His response to Victorian Britons who ‘saw Australia as a sphincter’ is to note that ‘the violence of such language articulated a metaphysical dread’.
It’s a dread he likens throughout the piece to his own Tasmanian experience in the 1950s and ’60s—a fear of being at the arse end of the earth. For Conrad does wonder, ‘—blushing a bit—if I entered London for the first time on bended knees’. Conrad’s experience was one of awe and worship of the northern lands.
Tales of Two Hemispheres are the tales of a man who would prefer not to choose between the two. Conrad describes the alluring smell of eucalypts that have buried their roots in foreign shores. His intellect longs for European legitimacy, but his body longs for the Australian sun and soil.
This is a collection in which the author tries to locate Australia’s position through history and in the world. You sense he is also trying to locate himself in his home country. The Australian bush holds a familiar scent, but the people and who they have become—can an expat know that? Conrad certainly applauds it.
There is a feeling of solace in the 2004 Boyer Lectures. Conrad, one senses, wishes there wasn’t the need to leave. In The Age on 16 November last year, Gerard Henderson suggests that there never was. He refers to the fact James McAuley and Gwen Harwood were teaching at the University of Tasmania when Conrad took his Rhodes Scholarship and pursued education abroad.
Henderson takes offence at Conrad’s description