I thought the Aboriginal ensemble Yothu Yindi was the best thing, but really it was no occasion for critical analysis. The maturity that Australia is right to be nervous about is cultural maturity, which can’t be had by wishing, but only through achievement – through creativity in all walks of life, from high art down to the small change of civil discourse. In that respect, the inspired contribution of the 45,000 white-hatted volunteer workers, many of them older than I am, was perhaps the most original feature of the whole jamboree. They were all charmingly helpful and some of them were outright funny. The visitors loved them. Small groups of Chinese would follow them around, confident that they were going somewhere interesting.
The Sydney Olympics, by synthesizing and highlighting what we already possessed, put us on our own map. We were already on everyone else’s, as a destination, a refuge, an ideal and (whisper it) a dream. The opening ceremony brought Australia together. The closing ceremony might have tried to show a united world, but it would have mocked the global tragedies that have given Australia its unique life and have made it the good place where all the earth’s agonies come to be assuaged, the last garden. The full story is too terrible to be told in a night. Better to let your hair down, and to camp it up.
The Olympics began with Cleopatra’s arrival in Rome, and they ended with Elizabeth Taylor’s departure for the airport. Next day I did the same. I have done so many times, but never with such regret.
EVEN AS WE SPEAK
CLIVE JAMES is the author of more than twenty books. As well as verse and novels, he has published collections of essays, literary criticism, television criticism and travel writing, plus three volumes of autobiography, Unreliable Memoirs, Falling Towards England and May Week Was in June. His most recent novel was The Silver Castle. As a television performer he has appeared regularly for both the BBC and ITV, most notably as writer and presenter of the Postcard series of travel documentaries. He helped to found the independent television company Watchmaker, and is currently chairman of the Internet enterprise Welcome Stranger. In 1992 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia and in 2003 he was awarded the Philip Hodgins memorial medal for literature.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Unreliable Memoirs
Falling Towards England
May Week Was in June
Always Unreliable
FICTION
Brilliant Creatures
The Remake
Brrm! Brrm!
The Silver Castle
VERSE
Peregrine Prykke’s Pilgrimage Through the London Literary World
Poem of the Year
Other Passports: Poems 1958–1985
The Book of My Enemy: Collected Verse 1958–2003
CRITICISM
The Metropolitan Critic (new edition, 1994)
Visions Before Midnight
At the Pillars of Hercules
The Crystal Bucket
First Reactions
Glued to the Box
Snakecharmers in Texas
The Dreaming Swimmer
On Television
Reliable Essays
TRAVEL
Flying Visits
First published 2001 by Picador
This edition published 2004 by Picador
This electronic edition published 2012 by Picador
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Copyright © Clive James 2001
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