0 - Eureka Street

ook that he had in him, the good-humoured but
serious survey of a working life.
Setting off on a journey that will take him to
Liverpool and a taxi-driver for whom John Lennon
may have acted as best man, to Wales for a week, to
the castle where Edward II met the red-hot poker,
Queenan thinks of his project as 'a cross between
a valentine and a writ of execution, an affectionate
jeremiad'. Confessing that 'the Brits have always
puzzled me', Queenan is in good company. As
Barry McKenzie put it more demotically, 'I'll never
get to the bottom of the Poms.'
For one thing, Britain has 'entirely too much
history'- And pseudo-history: Glastonbury teems
with 'hippies, warlocks, neo-Druids, and people
looking for Merlin so they can buy drugs off him'.
Travelling to a place of recent historical importance,
the home of the Beatles, Queenan promises
' No Mersey'. London is much less manageable, 'a
tourist's Golgotha' (better to be spectator than participant),
'intractable, insuperable, inexhaustible'.
Queenan visits Madame Tussaud's, which he
finds insufficiently absurd, and mentally reviews
English literature. Of the modern variety he prefers
books where nobody has been to Cambridge. His
musical adventures range from a private performance
in Oxford of Bach played on Handel's harpsichord, to
an Eagles tribute band concert in Stroud. Listing ten,
'make that twenty', things he hates about Britain,
Queenan begins with 'the twit', not only invented,
'but reluctantly beatified' in that country. He disparages
the Pre-Raphaelites-'those self-absorbed poltroons
had the nerve to demean the Renaissance'­
along with bad hair and 'rehearsed civility'.
Queenan Country is jovially enraged, delighting
in being presented with so many targets for the
author's ebullient scorn. The book is often very
funny, but Queenan overstays his welcome. At
times, too, the mask slips to reveal genuine contempt
for some of what he observes. In the end,
perhaps, this amusing and perceptive work is unavoidably
captive to Queenan's ambivalence. •
Peter Pierce is Professor of Australian literature at
James Cook University, Cairns.
NOVEMBER- DECEM BER 2005 EU REKA STREET 43