This is a book that is often studied in the final year of high school here in Australia, written by a philosopher about his dead father – that was all I knew about this book before I started reading it earlier this week. So, I expected it to be quite another kind of book to what it turned out to be. There were things I didn’t like about the author – for example, his tendency to be very general in some of his ‘summing up’ of people or events. I also really disliked him referring to his chosen profession as ‘the life of the mind’ – not just because it sounds so pretentious, but also because saying that seemed to undermine so much of what I feel lies under this book – the idea that everyone lives a life of the mind and that we all too often do not listen to those around us for what are really superficial reasons (they speak broken English or don’t look quite right) which ensures we miss the depth they all s easily could offer us. Others have told me to read his A Common Humanity – but I don’t think I will ever get around to it, to be honest, even though I now know I probably should. This one has always seemed the more urgent to get to, and now I finally have.What surprised me about this was that it was so oppressively about mental illness. I had no idea this was what the book would be about, if a biography can really be ‘about’ anything. It is told in the kind of matter-of-fact tone that makes the instances of abuse and harm and carelessness that occur due to mental illness seem almost too painful to read. There is lesson here if you are a writer – understatement is the best way to move people, at least, the people most worth moving who should be the people you are writing for in the first place. This book beautifully displays the way the hurt caused by mental illness can often seem almost banal to those who suffering from the consequences of the madness of those they love. This is a deeply moving book, and mostly in its way of not really trying to be moving at all.I’m very fond of Maryborough – the country out there has whatever it takes to fill that fabled and haunting beauty that is often spoken about the Australian bush – the kind of beauty that creeps up on you. It is not something you see or understand first off, you need to live with it for a little while for it to get under your skin. The land around Maryborough is not beautiful in any conventional way. This book, with so much of it set in Maryborough, is beautiful in much the say way. Sparse, almost desiccated, but also lovely and life affirming in the sense that despite how difficult and patchy life is there, there is something inspiring in getting to see life struggle on anyway. It is the inexorable call to existence. And even in this book, one so darkly shadowed by suicide, isn’t that the message in the end?I wonder what young people make of this book – particularly the lines where the author confides he always thought of sexual love as being an infinitely dangerous emotion, that he always feared it as the threat most likely to take away sanity.There is no question that sons writing about their fathers is an endlessly difficult task, and so, when it is done well it is also one that is directly proportional in fascination to the difficulty of the task. This is a quite remarkable book – told simply and with an eye less likely to pass over the author’s foibles, those committed by his younger self, than it is to forgive and to even seek to understand the harms caused to him by those that loved him in their imperfectly human ways and are still loved by him in return.
Written as a recollection, not as a present experience, this story spans 50 years in just over 200 pages. There is no room for detail, for sharing the journey, rather the reader bears witness and connects through empathy. It’s like sitting in an older person’s living room and listening to their life story – something I very much enjoy doing if the experiences are vastly different from my own, and these are. Through Raimond’s words, he offered me an opportunity to witness his childhood, the observations and interactions he had with his parents, family friends, and the wider relevance of immigrants assimilating into the Australian culture – something my own mother and grandparents did around the same time as Raimond’s.Romulus Gaita (Raimond's father), an immigrant to Australia from Yugoslavia, lived an unthinkably difficult life. Raised with violence, Romulus knew pain, hardship, living without. He strived to shield his son from the same and this book proves his success. Through Raimond’s memories, I developed a deep respect for Romulus, his family, the people he interacted with and for the toll mental illness takes.Romulus chose a passionate woman in Christiana (Raimond’s mother), but she came with huge problems. Romulus’ pride, his high morals, his honour, prevented him from blaming her for her failures (and there were many), and it also had him supporting her when she betrayed him to another man (many other men, it seems). A lesser man would have cast her aside: Romulus did not because he said there is no worse fate than mental illness, and Christiana was deeply unwell. The pride and compassion of this man was inspirational, it highlights the difference between cultures and the generosity of spirit that allowed him to co-exist with Australians who did not immediately appreciate and share those virtues.Raimond writes with pride, with strength, and I can’t help but share the admiration he holds for his father and for the people he writes about. As a child, Raimond experienced grief, loss, abandonment, confusion that no child should ever experience, yet he never doubted his father’s love for him, and he was never without support.This story is amazing, made all the moreso because it’s true.
Do You like book Romulus, My Father (1999)?
Good, but not the bastion of cultural excellence it was painted as when I first picked it up. Gaita acknowledges within the first few pages that the manuscript began its life as a eulogy, and that really shows in the writing -- the titular Romulus and his failings are treated gently. He is held up as a philosopher and gentleman, and the parts of him that are petty and human fade into the background, or become undercurrents in the narrative. In fact, everyone in this memoir is treated with kindness, which gentles the harshness of the society and the events described -- several suicides, infidelity, child neglect. The migrant experience in Australia is central to the narrative, and even that gets a vaseline lens -- hey, it's not as bad as the old country, right? Right? Gaita's choice of narrative style is also reminiscent of a eulogy -- the book is told as a series of anecdotes, reporting events and speech. Very little direct dialogue is employed, and it has the cumulative effect of making the memoir feel like a bedtime story or a fairytale. Interesting and moving overall, and it's easy to look past the nostalgic tone and see something of interest, if not something particularly memorable.
—Cory
This is a set text for my HSC Advanced English course (2014) And usually you get handed a prescribed text, and you know it may well be your free ticket to hell for the next 8 months. However, I can honestly say, without the deepest regret that this was an amazing memoir to read. It was an incredible book to write an essay on (may possibly be why I did better with Rom than any other text in my trials.) But this book leaves you breathless and heartbroken, and often brings a smile to your face. Through its honesty and clever re-telling, we get an insight of what it is like to love someone as complex as Christina, as well as how difficult adapting must have been for immigrants in the 40 -60's. As I am an immigrant myself, I can see the contrast of the 60's with today, concerning the view others have on immigrants from Europe etc. And so, I came to the conclusion that Raimond Gaita and his family are some of the strongest people around.
—Sophia
A brutal book.An absolutely astounding book.Without a shadow of sentimentality.Which is why it just tears at you.Read it with a valium.I put it on my philosophy shelf too.For this book is all about living an ethical life within the constraints of one's own personality, family and friends, environment, society and the joys and tragedies they bring every day.When the author, Raimond Gaita, visited the set of the film of his book during its recent production, the young boy playing him, flung himself on him and hugged him.That's what you will want to do too.See this fine movie, read the better book and lend it out!!!!A European addition to the Australian Experience.I knew Hungarian migrants like this as a very young boy - proud, strong and sensitive people who had drunk deep of the worst Life could offer and just started all over again. After the 1956 Uprising.This book is the genuine article.
—Wayne
