Riemer, a thoughtful Australian critic and professor (English/Sydney Univ.), turns to autobiography, presenting a literate, considered work with a curious evasion. Born in Budapest in 1936 to well-to-do parents, Riemer arrived in 1946 with mother and father in provincial Sydney, a displaced person with no knowledge of English. That lack, and confusion regarding the manners and mores of the antipodeans surrounding him, promptly landed him in a class for incompetent students, where he started his cultural osmosis into the world down under. His well- crafted narrative, despite the local argot (``the chocko-covered dunny under a superb jacaranda'') and references to writers often best appreciated by the locals, is finally cosmopolitan. A visit to his birthplace 44 years after leaving it acts as a Proustian madeleine that unleashes memories of a half-remembered past and fully prolix ruminations. Child of a secular Jewish family, later confirmed as a communicant of the Church of England, Riemer, in his tale of assimilation, ultimately depicts a human Mîbius strip; there's no inside, no outside, just a continuum. His analyses of Mittel European lifestyle, the meaning of citizenship, a migrant's disorientation, and the effect of memory, true or false, are fine. But one wonders through to the end of the book: What happened during the reign of the Nazis and then the Russians? How did the Riemers survive well enough to revive a subscription to the opera and later to make the first-class voyage to the other side of the globe? (There is a photo of the author's father in military uniform in 1942, but how did he contrive to get into and out of the costume?) The writing about cultural identity couldn't be nicer, but unavoidably one is left with a lingering disquiet because, despite veiled references to a world of brutality left behind, the otherwise frank autobiographer never describes the transcendent facts of his Central European life. (8 pages b&w photos)
Pub Date: Dec. 2, 1994
ISBN: 0-207-17398-2
Page Count: 232
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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