A November 2012 article for Bloomberg about the shark-jumping, ceiling-bumping, chest-thumping art pilot Damien Hirst is a fine example of Andrew Rice’s direct delivery, wonderfully evocative choice of detail, and strong sense of simile. (He likens Hirst to a fashion designer.) All this and a propensity for the killer last line, and you’ve got a writer who brings the giant buzzing incalculable world alive for you—then puts it in a very lovely box so you can take it home.
Rice’s subject is ostensibly business, but he understands intuitively that business is everywhere—that the world is transactional—so his subject is limitless. An article he wrote on the new World Trade Center is subtitled a “tale of power, money, tragedy and the unlikely rebirth of…” Mix these words around a bit and they could describe any part of Rice’s incisive oeuvre—and Shakespeare’s too—though Rice deals more with people who declaim “I AM” than with iambs. He’s been given a Pushcart and he wrote a book as good as its title, The Teeth May Smile but the Heart Does Not Forget. It’s about murder in Uganda.