Antipodean wit and wisdom

Shocking, I know, but I hadn’t paid much attention to Clive James since my dim distant undergraduate days 30 years ago, when I remember being vastly amused by his verse satire of Grub Street parvenus, Peregrine Prykke’s Pilgrimage. Since then he’s rather passed me by — I never thought his television shows up to much, his byline has never grabbed me and I have yet to consult his latest project, described by the blurb as ‘the world’s first serious multimedia personal website’ (serious?). Nothing personal, no formulated opinion of his talent one way or the other, I just wasn’t a fan.

Then came the prospect of a trans- atlantic flight, for which I decided his new collection of recent essays would be just the thing. It focuses on an engaging variety of topics — Larkin, Yeats, Philip Roth, the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, his native Australia and its literature, the general election of 2001, The West Wing, Bing Crosby and the crooners, Formula One racing, and ‘celebrity culture’ among them — and a cursory preview was encouraging.