"Books always speak of other books and every story tells a story that has already been told."
Kurosawa quote: ‘In a mad world, only the mad are sane.’
Longtime Sydney Morning Herald book reviewer Andrew Riemer has passed away; see, for example, Melanie Kembrey's obituary in the SMH.
There are links to and quotes from dozens of his reviews at the complete review.
“Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.”
― Postscript to the Name of the Rose
ANDREW RIEMERA new novel by Roger McDonald is always good news. When Colts Ran, a quirky history in a way of rural Australia since World War II, didn't disappoint. Nor did Jonathan Franzen: Freedom, his first major work since the phenomenally successful The Corrections, is a generously paced, beautifully observed fable of lost illusions and the return of a glimmer of hope – but then the novel was written when the Tea Party was still no more than a joke. Two distinguished debuts came my way. Jeffrey Chambers's The Vintage and the Gleaning invites comparisons with McDonald's new book: here, in a different mode, is another wise, clear-headed but fundamentally sympathetic view of country life. As its title suggests, David Musgrave's Glissando is a dazzling riff on all manner of things, not the least Patrick White's Voss. Finally, anyone wanting an appropriate Christmas present shouldn't overlook Philip Pullman's The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ.
Former academic, author and critic Andrew Riemer, who reviewed books for The Sydney Morning Herald for nearly three decades, has died aged 84.
Riemer, who passed away at his Mosman home on Friday morning, has been remembered as a voracious reader who had a keen memory, vast knowledge and eye for detail.
Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1936, Riemer migrated to Australia with his family when he was 11. After an unsuccessful attempt to study medicine, he switched to arts at The University of Sydney and received his PhD in English Literature from the University of London.
He started work as an academic in The University of Sydney's English department in 1963, shortly before the faculty famously split into two competing schools of scholarship.
Riemer would remain at the university for nearly three decades, becoming an Associate Professor, before he retired in 1994. While he had a reputation as a fine teacher, Riemer's sense of estrangement from academic life and his frustration and increasing disillusionment is captured in his 1998 memoir Sandstone Gothic: Confessions of an Accidental Academic.
Riemer's earliest reviews for The Herald were of a book about Shakespeare and Christina Stead's novel I'm Dying Laughing: The Humourist in 1987. In Sandstone Gothic, Riemer writes that after those reviews, "my second and perhaps much more fulfilling career got underway".
Longtime friend and agent Lyn Tranter said Riemer was passionate about his work and one of the best book reviewers in the country.
'One of the best': book reviewer, academic and author Andrew Riemer dies
In Search of Self and Australia in Andrew Riemer's The Habsburg Cafe 42
Abstract
On a lovely January afternoon in Sydney, while sipping tea in the ornately decorated lobby of the Mitchell Library, I was introduced by a mutual friend to a rather short balding man with a stern look and an undefinable fire in his eyes: he was Andrew Riemer, who like the rest of us crowd attended the New South Wales Writers' conference in 1995. I immediately recognized him as the author of my recently purchased book discussed here, The Habsburg Cafe (1993), a travelogue recounting his voyage through some of the countries of Central Europe, Austria and Hungary, the area to which, as regards its habits, food, architecture and the like, also belongs my native country Slovenia. This is why it probably caught my attention on the bookshelf, for I was most curious to see the former countries of the Habsburg and the later Austro-Hungarian monarchy through the eyes of both an outsider and an insider to the region, the fine observation of a Hungarian-born, migrant Australian author, Andrew Riemer.
Antipodean Writers Festivals will miss Andrew Riemer
In Search of Self and Australia in Andrew Riemer's The Habsburg Cafe 42
Abstract
On a lovely January afternoon in Sydney, while sipping tea in the ornately decorated lobby of the Mitchell Library, I was introduced by a mutual friend to a rather short balding man with a stern look and an undefinable fire in his eyes: he was Andrew Riemer, who like the rest of us crowd attended the New South Wales Writers' conference in 1995. I immediately recognized him as the author of my recently purchased book discussed here, The Habsburg Cafe (1993), a travelogue recounting his voyage through some of the countries of Central Europe, Austria and Hungary, the area to which, as regards its habits, food, architecture and the like, also belongs my native country Slovenia. This is why it probably caught my attention on the bookshelf, for I was most curious to see the former countries of the Habsburg and the later Austro-Hungarian monarchy through the eyes of both an outsider and an insider to the region, the fine observation of a Hungarian-born, migrant Australian author, Andrew Riemer.
Polish author Jerzy Pilch has passed away; see, for example, the Polityka report and the (updated) Jerzy Pilch page at Culture.pl.
Ghosting-author Jennie Erdal has passed away; see, for example, Annalena McAfee's obituary in The Guardian.