The Austrian Riveter: Writing from Austria ed. by Rosie Goldsmith et al (review)

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Reviewed by:

• The Austrian Riveter: Writing from Austria ed. by Rosie Goldsmith et al
• Vincent Kling

Rosie Goldsmith et al., eds. The Austrian Riveter: Writing from Austria. Riveter Eleventh Edition, April 2023. 232 pp.

Education guides learners from the unknown to the known, an axiom teachers can forget for lack of challenging exercise. Most readers of this journal teach and so have probably been asked by interested colleagues outside our own specialty what they should read. If those asking know German, they can be directed to personal favorites as well as to various anthologies and histories or to critical discussions like Joanna Drynda and Marta Wimmer, eds., Neue Stimmen aus Österreich: 11 Einblicke in die Literatur der Jahrtausendwende or Hermann Korte, ed., Österreichische Gegenwartsliteratur, a special edition of Text + Kritik. But what about the interested but inexperienced reader—they still do exist—who does not read German but wants a fairly full picture of contemporary Austrian literature? Many specialists, precisely because they are that, might be at a loss for a reliable resource.

Here is where the present volume is invaluable as a compendium, a one-stop anthology of translated excerpts, reviews, and brief critical articles that form a trustworthy guide for general readers. A good many excerpts are from works not yet fully translated, and a few of them are labeled as “Recommended for Translation.” There is in addition a QR code (231) linking to a bibliography, compiled by Lara Bulloch, of “Austrian fiction, non-fiction and poetry, translated and published in the UK and USA between 2013 and 2023.” The Riveter series, which is edited by Rosie Goldsmith—I confess it took me a moment to work out “Rosie the Riveter”—focuses on various contemporary literatures; this edition commemorates Austria’s status as guest of honor at the Leipzig Book Fair in April 2023. It was funded by the Austrian Cultural Forum London as an initiative of the European Literature Network. Among others, the editors include Goldsmith (“Riveter-in-Chief”), Sheridan Marshall, Tess Lewis, and Jamie Bulloch.

The perennial question of what Austrian literature is arises once again in an interview between Goldsmith and Katja Gasser (5–7), and the volume includes sections on “Austrian History” (10–29), “Vienna” (32–51), “Stefan Zweig and Europe” (53–56), “Writing about Europe” (60–66), “Literature beyond Vienna” (67–77), “Austrian Jews” (78–99), “Austrian Publishing” (109–24), “Translation” (125–30), “Austrian Women” (131–57), “Austrian Poetry” (159–80), “Where Writing Emerges” (181–90), “Austrian Borderlands” (193–99), “Rural Life” (200–205), “Children and Young Adults” [End Page 139] (206–12), and “Austrian Crime Writing” (216–21), followed by contributors’ biographies (222–31). Those biographies alone establish the range of this Riveter edition; brief as they are, they occupy nine pages (222–31).

This number and range of subjects, all of which at first might appear to be treated too briefly, may make the book seem a hodgepodge or an all-too-shallow miscellany, but it is important to realize that the printed book is a condensation. Many of the contributions, as for example the interview with Adam Freudenheim of Pushkin Press (53–54), are continued online, available ateurolitnetwork .com.

Some writers from earlier generations are discussed (Christine Lavant, Friederike Mayröcker, Stefan Zweig, Ilse Aichinger, Heimito von Doderer), and the director of the Literature Museum of the Austrian National Library, Bernhard Fetz, outlines the historical and archival functions of that institution (“Giving Life to Objects,” 15–17), but the primary focus of The Austrian Riveter is on current writers and their work, ranging widely across present-day literature rather than covering history. Open anywhere and find—cited at random—Raphaela Edelbauer, Linda Stift, Laura Freudenthaler, Clemens J. Setz, Teresa Präauer, Reinhard Kaiser-Mühlecker, Daniel Wisser, and many other quite recent authors in addition to work by and about more established but (thankfully) still active figures like Robert Menasse, Raoul Schrott, Christoph Ransmayr, Daniel Kehlmann, and Arno Geiger.

It is almost a truism that Austria produces a disproportionately large number of writers, so this fine volume could be twice as extensive and still exclude notable figures. Neither a younger author like Peter Karoshi, recently nominated for the European Union...