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After Romulus
In After Romulus , Raimond Gaita revisits the world of his deeply loved memoir and his childhood in central Victoria.
He writes about Hora, who was an inspiration to him throughout his life, about the making of the acclaimed film starring Eric Bana, about ideas of truth, the limits of character, and the conflict between love and morality. And, most movingly, about his mother Christine and his longing for her.
Raimond Gaita was born in Germany in 1946. He is Emeritus Professor of moral philosophy at Kings College London and a Professorial fellow at the Melbourne Law School and the faculty of Arts of the University of Melbourne. His books Good and An Absolute Conception ; Romulus, My Father ; A Common Humanity ; The Philosopher’s Dog ; Essays on Muslims and Multiculturalism (as editor and contributor); and After Romulus . A feature film of Romulus, My Father was released in 2007, and won the AFI award for Best Film, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Young Actor.
textpublishing.com.au
'Gaita is a brave, decent and emotionally intelligent man...we need more like him.' Stephen Romei, Australian
'Somehow, what was true of Romulus, of the light his goodness cast upon the world a light that made it possible for his son Raimond to survive childhood without bitterness, to love without shame or condescension his sick mother who had abandoned him this light binds together and gleams out of the book as well. There are moments you can find them, captured in passing, in After Romulus when the light settles for a second and you can see it at work.' Maria Tumarkin, Weekend Australian
'In After Romulus Raimond Gaita invites us into the far reaches of his considerable mind and the deep places of his soul. This will be felt as a privilege by most readers, as it should. And it is, as it turns out, not just a sequel, but an extension of all that was good in his initial story. It is a book to stretch the mind and enlarge the heart.' Canberra Times
'It is impossible not to be moved by this achingly raw remembrance and grateful for the stunning candour of its author.' Sunday Age
'This extraordinary book set me reflecting upon my own residency in the world - my own decency, condescension, loves and truths.' Weekend Herald (NZ)
'This is the kind of writing that is so brave it makes you flinch, so profound it makes you examine yourself, and so moving it makes you see life afresh. I was entranced as usual by Rai Gaita's limpid style, and his signature combination of philosophical intellect and warm heart.' Anna Funder
'[The essay] "An Unassuageable Longing" explains Christine and makes her she is finally chronicled with love and rigour, as was Romulus...In a book full of extraordinary revelations, this chapter will stay long in the reader's memory.' Age
'Raimond Gaita's After Romulus is an eloquent meditation on love, friendship, philosophy and loss. Gaita's tragic loss of his mother at an early age reminds us of Emily Dickinson's "The craving is upon the child like a claw it cannot remove". The reader is compelled to admiration by this brave book.' Alex Miller, Sydney Morning Herald 's best books of 2011
'There are times when the reader is right there beside Gaita, delighting in the stinging descriptions of his childhood at Frogmore and sympathising with the heartache that confronted him so early in life.' Sun Herald
He writes about Hora, who was an inspiration to him throughout his life, about the making of the acclaimed film starring Eric Bana, about ideas of truth, the limits of character, and the conflict between love and morality. And, most movingly, about his mother Christine and his longing for her.
Raimond Gaita was born in Germany in 1946. He is Emeritus Professor of moral philosophy at Kings College London and a Professorial fellow at the Melbourne Law School and the faculty of Arts of the University of Melbourne. His books Good and An Absolute Conception ; Romulus, My Father ; A Common Humanity ; The Philosopher’s Dog ; Essays on Muslims and Multiculturalism (as editor and contributor); and After Romulus . A feature film of Romulus, My Father was released in 2007, and won the AFI award for Best Film, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Young Actor.
textpublishing.com.au
'Gaita is a brave, decent and emotionally intelligent man...we need more like him.' Stephen Romei, Australian
'Somehow, what was true of Romulus, of the light his goodness cast upon the world a light that made it possible for his son Raimond to survive childhood without bitterness, to love without shame or condescension his sick mother who had abandoned him this light binds together and gleams out of the book as well. There are moments you can find them, captured in passing, in After Romulus when the light settles for a second and you can see it at work.' Maria Tumarkin, Weekend Australian
'In After Romulus Raimond Gaita invites us into the far reaches of his considerable mind and the deep places of his soul. This will be felt as a privilege by most readers, as it should. And it is, as it turns out, not just a sequel, but an extension of all that was good in his initial story. It is a book to stretch the mind and enlarge the heart.' Canberra Times
'It is impossible not to be moved by this achingly raw remembrance and grateful for the stunning candour of its author.' Sunday Age
'This extraordinary book set me reflecting upon my own residency in the world - my own decency, condescension, loves and truths.' Weekend Herald (NZ)
'This is the kind of writing that is so brave it makes you flinch, so profound it makes you examine yourself, and so moving it makes you see life afresh. I was entranced as usual by Rai Gaita's limpid style, and his signature combination of philosophical intellect and warm heart.' Anna Funder
'[The essay] "An Unassuageable Longing" explains Christine and makes her she is finally chronicled with love and rigour, as was Romulus...In a book full of extraordinary revelations, this chapter will stay long in the reader's memory.' Age
'Raimond Gaita's After Romulus is an eloquent meditation on love, friendship, philosophy and loss. Gaita's tragic loss of his mother at an early age reminds us of Emily Dickinson's "The craving is upon the child like a claw it cannot remove". The reader is compelled to admiration by this brave book.' Alex Miller, Sydney Morning Herald 's best books of 2011
'There are times when the reader is right there beside Gaita, delighting in the stinging descriptions of his childhood at Frogmore and sympathising with the heartache that confronted him so early in life.' Sun Herald
225 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 1, 2010
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148 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 23, 2017
If you thought that this was obvious, a sequel, cashing in, you couldn't be further from the truth. This companion to Romulus, My Father is the product of, on the one hand, the needs of the philosopher Gaita to process various ways in which the consequences of this book affected him and on the other, the needs of everybody who read it. Although I complained in my review that Romulus, My Father had been ignored by the world at large, it deeply moved Australia.
So you write a book, a philosophical - because you are a philosopher - account of the life of your truly heroic and brave and encompassing of all the best human virtues, father and his friend. You write of your life in the Australian countryside, where nothing happens except madness and the aftermath of madness. You make the prose sing like a poem, but still, it is just a book about a migrant and other people around him going mad. And it becomes such a thing, that before you know it a movie is being talked about. And eventually is made.
Gaita warns the reader at the start of this book that it is hard to read. To paraphrase the xkcd cartoon 'Stand back, I'm doing philosophy'. Things could get dangerous. And certainly difficult. At that they do. I put my hard hat on and my brain still got a bit of a battering. Clearly there are, as Gaita himself advises, chapters that need to be reread and rereread as he talks about Romulus, My Father from a relatively formal philosophical viewpoint.
But Gaita wants nothing more than to be there with the reader every step of the way. It might hurt, but I'm holding your hand, see? And much of it is straightforwardly interesting. By a complete coincidence just before I started reading this, I had put about 200 volumes of autobiography/biography on the shelves. I didn't know why, given that it is not something I ever read. But his discussions of memory and understanding have given me some perspective on that now. Perhaps I will learn something about the process of writing this sort of thing from reading the books I've gathered together.
The musings on the nature of memory continue on in a different form. He discusses at length, partly because he has been asked to by his readers, the making of the movie. Very few people will have seen this movie outside Australia, it was a typical Australian triumph, small movie, small budget, big effect if one cared to watch. Some of you will even have heard of the actor who played Romulus because it was The Hulk. The making of the movie was an incredibly painful process for Gaita. Much as he highly praises it, (and certainly I thought it was wonderful, having watched some years before reading the book) it could never be the same as what was in his mind. Worse, though, it changed things. There were many discussions about this, much angst. The film still stays true to the soul of the book and the changes are minor in general, but how each one must have ripped a little of Gaita's innards apart.
rest here: https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpre...
So you write a book, a philosophical - because you are a philosopher - account of the life of your truly heroic and brave and encompassing of all the best human virtues, father and his friend. You write of your life in the Australian countryside, where nothing happens except madness and the aftermath of madness. You make the prose sing like a poem, but still, it is just a book about a migrant and other people around him going mad. And it becomes such a thing, that before you know it a movie is being talked about. And eventually is made.
Gaita warns the reader at the start of this book that it is hard to read. To paraphrase the xkcd cartoon 'Stand back, I'm doing philosophy'. Things could get dangerous. And certainly difficult. At that they do. I put my hard hat on and my brain still got a bit of a battering. Clearly there are, as Gaita himself advises, chapters that need to be reread and rereread as he talks about Romulus, My Father from a relatively formal philosophical viewpoint.
But Gaita wants nothing more than to be there with the reader every step of the way. It might hurt, but I'm holding your hand, see? And much of it is straightforwardly interesting. By a complete coincidence just before I started reading this, I had put about 200 volumes of autobiography/biography on the shelves. I didn't know why, given that it is not something I ever read. But his discussions of memory and understanding have given me some perspective on that now. Perhaps I will learn something about the process of writing this sort of thing from reading the books I've gathered together.
The musings on the nature of memory continue on in a different form. He discusses at length, partly because he has been asked to by his readers, the making of the movie. Very few people will have seen this movie outside Australia, it was a typical Australian triumph, small movie, small budget, big effect if one cared to watch. Some of you will even have heard of the actor who played Romulus because it was The Hulk. The making of the movie was an incredibly painful process for Gaita. Much as he highly praises it, (and certainly I thought it was wonderful, having watched some years before reading the book) it could never be the same as what was in his mind. Worse, though, it changed things. There were many discussions about this, much angst. The film still stays true to the soul of the book and the changes are minor in general, but how each one must have ripped a little of Gaita's innards apart.
rest here: https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpre...
August 9, 2022
Didn't quite finish it. The first book of a new book club and I found it a challenge to read. Possibly hindered by the fact I hadn't read the first book nor seen the movie. Overall, the author has great admiration for his father and some strange thoughts on his mother.
October 8, 2021
Five essays, reflections on life
In this book, published in 2010, Raimond Gaita revisits the world he writes of in ‘Romulus, My Father’ of the events after the book (and film) were released. There are five essays in this book:
‘A Summer-Coloured Humanism’ about Hora;
‘Character and Its Limits’ and ‘Truth and Truthfulness in Narrative’
Both touch on the philosophical debt he owes his father and Hora;
‘From Book to Film’ is about the making of the film ‘Romulus, My Father’; and
‘An Unassuageable Longing’ is about his mother.
As indicated in his introduction, Mr Gaita wrote these essays at different times, and they have different styles. The five essays are united by Mr Gaita’s search to understand the people he is writing about and to represent them (and their influences) as accurately as he can. While his father Romulus is central to his life, others (especially Hora) were important.
‘It is bitterness rather than pain that corrodes the soul, deforms personality and character and tempts us to misanthropy.’
But these are not simply autobiographical musings about individuals and influences. Mr Gaita invites the reader to think, to reflect on what constitutes truth, on the complexities of existence (especially for those with mental illness). And in the background always is Romulus himself, with his principles of integrity, truthfulness, and ethical behaviour.
I read these essays slowly, from a biographical perspective as well as trying to appreciate some of the philosophical issues raised. When reading ‘An Unassuageable Longing’ I felt for the small child who had such limited opportunity to know his mother. These are essays to read and reflect on, to revisit.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
In this book, published in 2010, Raimond Gaita revisits the world he writes of in ‘Romulus, My Father’ of the events after the book (and film) were released. There are five essays in this book:
‘A Summer-Coloured Humanism’ about Hora;
‘Character and Its Limits’ and ‘Truth and Truthfulness in Narrative’
Both touch on the philosophical debt he owes his father and Hora;
‘From Book to Film’ is about the making of the film ‘Romulus, My Father’; and
‘An Unassuageable Longing’ is about his mother.
As indicated in his introduction, Mr Gaita wrote these essays at different times, and they have different styles. The five essays are united by Mr Gaita’s search to understand the people he is writing about and to represent them (and their influences) as accurately as he can. While his father Romulus is central to his life, others (especially Hora) were important.
‘It is bitterness rather than pain that corrodes the soul, deforms personality and character and tempts us to misanthropy.’
But these are not simply autobiographical musings about individuals and influences. Mr Gaita invites the reader to think, to reflect on what constitutes truth, on the complexities of existence (especially for those with mental illness). And in the background always is Romulus himself, with his principles of integrity, truthfulness, and ethical behaviour.
I read these essays slowly, from a biographical perspective as well as trying to appreciate some of the philosophical issues raised. When reading ‘An Unassuageable Longing’ I felt for the small child who had such limited opportunity to know his mother. These are essays to read and reflect on, to revisit.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
January 21, 2012
"After Romulus" follows on from Gaita's moving memoir "Romulus, My Father". In the earlier book he wrote of his immigrant family and their friends in rural Victoria in the 1950s and the despair, madness, love and simple goodness that filled their lives. Gaita is a Professor of Philosophy and "After Romulus" is unashamedly a philosophical work, in which Gaita uses his experience of the important people in his life (father Romulus, mother Christine and father figure Hora) to explore and illustrate philosophical ideas about love, longing, truth, humanism and character. In the introduction he writes "They are, in parts, difficult essays. I ask the reader to read them slowly, but, if having done that they are still hard to fathom, to move on and return to them later". I did find them hard to fathom, not being versed in philosophical thought or writing. I found myself skipping on to the descriptions of people and place which, as before, are profound and beautiful. I think it is a failing in me rather than Gaita that I did not get more from this book. Not expecting a work of philosophy and deep seriousness, I probably read it at the wrong time - but when is the right time for such a book? It requires effort from the reader, effort which I wasn't prepared to give now. But I have been made to think (never a bad thing!)and may, as Gaita says, return to this book when I am older and more ready to take the time to see the wisdom!
September 18, 2013
Gaita has written five essays (he calls them that, rather than chapters) teasing out some of the themes that lay within Romulus My Father, reflecting on what writing that book has meant for him, and the process of turning the book into a film.
The essays expand on the character of Hora, his 'second father'; the friendship between his father and Hora; and Christina, his mother, whose death when he was a chid has left him with an 'unassuageable longing - the title for the essay on her, the last of this book.
Throughout, Gaita integrates threads of story with philosophical interrogation of issues such as morality, integrity, ethical behavior and truthfulness - principles by which his father lived and which drive Gaita himself.
This is a more personal book than Romulus My Father, as Gaita has gone deeper into his own emotional territory as well as the territory of others.
It left me gasping in places. It's an extraordinary and wonderful book.
This review from The Australian newspaper gives a feel for the colour and texture of the book.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/...
The essays expand on the character of Hora, his 'second father'; the friendship between his father and Hora; and Christina, his mother, whose death when he was a chid has left him with an 'unassuageable longing - the title for the essay on her, the last of this book.
Throughout, Gaita integrates threads of story with philosophical interrogation of issues such as morality, integrity, ethical behavior and truthfulness - principles by which his father lived and which drive Gaita himself.
This is a more personal book than Romulus My Father, as Gaita has gone deeper into his own emotional territory as well as the territory of others.
It left me gasping in places. It's an extraordinary and wonderful book.
This review from The Australian newspaper gives a feel for the colour and texture of the book.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/...
Read
July 30, 2018I read this book as an accompanying text to Romulus, My Father, and found it important and illuminating. I was struck by the treatment of "truth" in some of the essays -- what truth means in memoir -- and, again, by the incredible family story that defines the author's life. And I will never tire of the landscape of Raimond Gaita's story, whether it is a character in his memoir or in this book of essays.
July 15, 2024
Gaita reflects on his life and how he survived with his mother who suicided when he was 12 and his dad later. He reflects on the psychologically tortured life of his mother and justifies her promiscuity in terms of her mental health. Never judging either parents in fact holds them both, but especially his father in great moral esteem. In fact the book bears witness to his fathers goodness and sense of morality
December 15, 2019
A fabulous read which added further to my enjoyment of ‘Romulus, My Father’.
January 24, 2012
Having read and enjoyed Romulus My Father it was interesting to read Gaita's feelings about that book and the film, and to read how the book/film affected the relatives of the people in that book. Apparently it changed peoples lives, and brought people together.
December 18, 2014
An interesting and tragic story in many respects but the style is a bit flat for my liking. Amazing detail in the recollections.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews