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Conversations With Beethoven

Sanford Friedman Richard Howard

$32.99

Paperback

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English
New York Review of Books
15 September 2014
Inspired by the famous composer's notebooks, this biographical novel offers ""a perfect portrait of an irascible genius"" and ""revelatory fossils of the last year of Beethoven's anguished life"" (Edmund White)
Deaf as he was, Beethoven had to be addressed in writing, and he was always accompanied by a notebook in which people could scribble questions and comments. In a tour de force fiction invention, Conversations with Beethoven tells the story of the last year of Beethoven's life almost entirely through such notebook entries. Friends, family, students, doctors, and others attend to the volatile Maestro, whose sometimes unpredictable and often very loud replies we infer. A fully fleshed and often very funny portrait of Beethoven emerges. He struggles with his music and with his health; he argues with and insults just about everyone. Most of all, he worries about his wayward-and beloved-nephew Karl.

A large cast of Dickensian characters surrounds the great composer at the center of this wonderfully engaging novel, which deepens in the end to make a memorable music of its own.
By:  
Introduction by:  
Imprint:   New York Review of Books
Country of Publication:   United States
Edition:   Main
Dimensions:   Height: 203mm,  Width: 16mm,  Spine: 127mm
Weight:   309g
ISBN:   9781590177624
ISBN 10:   1590177622
Pages:   344
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Born in New York City, Sanford Friedman (1928-2010) was an American novelist and playwright, who taught writing at Juilliard. After graduating from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, he served in the army in Korea from 1951 to 1953, where he was awarded a Bronze Star. His 1961 novel, Totempole, will be published by NYRB Classics in the fall of 2014. b>Richard Howard received a National Book Award for his translation of Les Fleurs du mal and a Pulitzer Prize for Untitled Subjects, his third volume of poems. He is the translator of the NYRB Classics Alien Hearts, The Unknown Masterpiece, and When the World Spoke French.

Reviews for Conversations With Beethoven

"Friedman, who died in 2010, was something of a prodigy - a playwright and novelist who also won a Bronze Star in Korea - but until now never found a publisher for this book, which is a scandal. But at least NYRB Classics (which has never published a duff book since it came into being, so far as I know) has rescued it from limbo ...It is an astonishing achievement."" New Statesman The manuscript of Conversations with Beethoven was left unpublished at [Friedman's] death; NYRB Classics has done a service in bringing it to light, since intelligent novels on the subject of composers-or musicians of any kind-rarely come along. Alex Ross, The New Yorker ...a perfect grasp of ebbing mortality, in all its tedium and elusive clarity, informs the depiction of Beethoven's final year...The novel's brilliance lies in the discovery of the flawed human behind immortal genius: Friedman's Beethoven is just like us. Publishers Weekly starred review Conversations with Beethoven is unclassifiable-a novel comprised exclusively of 'oral' speech, that reads rapidly on the page like a kind of music-poetry; a prose poem of numerous voices, in which passion (both declared and undeclared) is the driving force; an intimately detailed double portrait of Beethoven and his nephew Karl that will linger long in the memory, like the most beautiful and enigmatic music. Joyce Carol Oates Conversations with Beethoven is a perfect portrait of an irascible genius. I always wanted to write a book about the tragic relationship between Beethoven and his nephew Karl, but it seems Sanford Friedman got there first. By relying on the format of the conversation books, Friedman cleverly cuts through all the tedious loquaciousness of the period; what we're left with are the revelatory fossils of the last year of Beethoven's anguished life. Edmund White"


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