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Critic of the Month

Geordie Williamson

Geordie Williamson is a Sydney-based freelance critic and book reviewer. He was born in 1972, and raised in rural New South Wales. He studied English literature at the University of Sydney and University College London, but admits that most of his reading has been off the syllabus. He is currently completing doctoral research in the area of Romantic prose.

He has worked at everything from roustabout to rare book dealer. For several glorious years, he looked after the Modern English literature department of the London booksellers Bernard Quaritch. He eventually moved to Dorset, where he failed to make much headway on his PhD but did become fascinated by rare breed pigs. He plans to reintroduce the Gloucester Old Spot to Australia.

Geordie began reviewing for the now-defunct Australian's Review of Books in 1999. Since then, he has written in Australia for the Sydney Morning Herald and, latterly, the Australian, including its new monthly journal, the Australian Literary Review. In the UK he wrote for the Literary Review, Evening Standard, Spectator, and sat on the arts editorial board of Prospect magazine.

Geordie Williamson and ABR

Geordie began reviewing for ABR in 2001. After a five-year hiatus while overseas, he returned to the fold, and is now an editorial adviser to the magazine.

Geordie Williamson on reviewing

Joyce Carol Oates puts it best. In a recent New York Review of Books piece, she quotes from the opening pages of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, where an observer says of the eminent writer Gustav von Aschenbach: '"... [He] has always lived like this" - here the speaker closed the fingers of his left hand to a fist - "never like this" - and he let his open hand hang relaxed from the back of his chair.'

Oates asks, 'What more appropriate image for the art of criticism: the tightly closed fist, the open and relaxed hand? The one concerned with defining boundaries, passing judgment, inflicting punishment; the other with presenting the subject sympathetically, pushing beyond boundaries, a predilection for appreciation and praise.'
I like that, the open hand. It is the kind of criticism I hope to write.

Some ABR reviews by Geordie Williamson

Britain, Ian (ed.) Meanjin: Vol 65, No.2., On Cities, 284/54

Gibbs, A.M., Bernard Shaw: A Life, UNSW Press, 282/10


  

More ABR critics

Gillian Dooley was lucky enough to belong to a family where intellectual and cultural life was as basic as breathing, and where education was more important than new curtains. Gillian was our March 2007 Critic of the Month.

Brian McFarlane has had three sometimes overlapping careers. First was as a schoolteacher, after graduating from the Univers-ity of Melbourne: he taught in schools in Victoria and England, ending this career with fifteen years at Trinity Grammar, Melbourne. Brian was our February 2006 Critic of the Month.

David McCooey is (in alphabetical order) an academic, critic, poet and reviewer. He lives in Geelong where he is a senior lecturer in literary studies at Deakin University. He has been a judge for a number of major literary awards, and he is on the editorial boards of a number of academic journals. David was our December/January 2007 critic of the Month.

ABR board member Bridget Griffen-Foley is well known as a Packer biographer and media critic. She was our November 2006 Critic of the Month.

 

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