Australia is such a small country that, whenever any Australian gets noticed for anything1 we all tend to feel a glow of vicarious achievement. So I was pleased to see that Germaine Greer was ranked second in a Prospect magazine list of 100 top British intellectuals, just ahead of Amartya Sen and Eric Hobsbawm.
Having enjoyed my burst of patriotic pride, I have to ask what they are smoking in the Old Country these days. The Australian view of Germaine Greer2 is probably best summed up by Geoff HonnorGreer has metamorphosed into a Barry Humphries creation: the eccentric old bluestocking aunt who loves to blather on in a colourfully opinionated, slightly shocking way about the great issues of the day. These, oddly enough, seem to always come back to the single greatest issue of all - herself.In fact, Humphries himself would rank ahead of Greer in my rankings of expat Aussie intellectuals. And if you want an expat with bitterly negative views of home, you can’t go past Robert Hughes (admittedly, since he’s based in the US, he wasn’t eligible for the Prospect poll).
1 It doesn’t even have to be something creditable. Just being noticed is enough. And we’re not too fussy as to who we count as an Australian. In particular, any Kiwi who’s done so much as pass through the transit lounge at Sydney airport automatically has their achievements added to the Australian total. OTOH, we’re happy to disown Rupert Murdoch.
2 I leave aside the shrinking pool of those who are silly enough to be outraged by her provocations
To be fair, it’s not just a list of ‘intellectuals, it’s ‘public intellectuals’, a wholly different and inadequately defined subspecies. And Germs is nothing if not public.
Cor! Dame Edna as an ‘public’ intellectual? Dems slim pickins! Too bad Betty Bowers was’nt born outback, right? Hughes at least plays the part. Murdoch is arguably the scourge of the media/entertainment everywhere. Isn’t that enough to count for something?
I haven’t been able to trust a word dear Germaine says since the time I heard her holding forth on one of the few topics I’m better versed than her on: baseball. Literally every one of the ten or so statements she overwhelmed her fellow British panelists with was either completely wrong or the result of a lack of understanding of the game. But of course the British intellectuals knew even less than she did, so no one called her out - though as loudly as I was shouting at my TV, I’m surprised no one at the White City studios heard me.
And she said everything with such self-confidence and conviction.
Perhaps that over the top self-belief in the rightness of everything one says is a key part of being a public intellectual, and part of the reason that men, with our tendency towards self-confident bluster, are more likely to hold forth in the public eye.
Since when has it been necessary to be right to be an intelectual
“Academics get paid for being clever, not for being right.”
- Donald Norman
Reuben, that was Australian Rules baseball she was discussing.
Hitchens over Heaney; Frayn over Stoppard; Pullman tied with Kermode; Pullman and Amis on the list at all; Maxwell-Davies, but none of the composers he champions.
For Aussies, the biggest insult is Thomas Keneally NOT being on it.
Personally, I’d put Clive James above Greer and Humphries. Best export from Oz after Penfolds….
The best Greer moment was when she was on a panel discussing Britain’s best-loved books (A BBC TV project called “The Big Read”). She held forth at great length about how awful “Lord of the Rings” is, how childish, how naive, how politically objectionable. After some probing by the chair, Andy Marr, she finally conceded that she’d never actually read it.
Iain, you just ruined Germs for me forever!
Let me join the conga line of patriots pointing out that Lord Robert May is one of ours. And he is a genuine heavy.
Hey, where is Norma Khouri? To my mind, at the moment, she is definitely the only Australian who should be up for a Nobel Prize. Unfortunately, the category — Fake — has yet to get by the Swedish senate. But screw those blond haired bigots! Norma is in a place all her own.
“Norma is in a place all her own.”
Far from it. In Australia, the literary hoax is a major and respected genre, with its own critical literature, expert commentators and so on. If the Nobel committee ever gets around to recognising its importance, there’s be a string of Aussies in line for the prize.
John - this is what happens when the survivors of a penal colony get universal education. And then our passion for sport collides with a love of language.
We become devoted spectators of the crime of literary fraud.
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