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Critics' Opinion:
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First Published:
May 2016, 224 pages
Paperback:
Jun 2017, 224 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Donna Chavez
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A compact masterpiece dedicated to the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich: Julian Barnes's first novel since his best-selling, Man Booker Prize–winning The Sense of an Ending
In 1936, Shostakovich, just thirty, fears for his livelihood and his life. Stalin, hitherto a distant figure, has taken a sudden interest in his work and denounced his latest opera. Now, certain he will be exiled to Siberia (or, more likely, executed on the spot), Shostakovich reflects on his predicament, his personal history, his parents, various women and wives, his children - and all who are still alive themselves hang in the balance of his fate.
And though a stroke of luck prevents him from becoming yet another casualty of the Great Terror, for decades to come he will be held fast under the thumb of despotism: made to represent Soviet values at a cultural conference in New York City, forced into joining the Party and compelled, constantly, to weigh appeasing those in power against the integrity of his music.
Barnes elegantly guides us through the trajectory of Shostakovich's career, at the same time illuminating the tumultuous evolution of the Soviet Union. The result is both a stunning portrait of a relentlessly fascinating man and a brilliant exploration of the meaning of art and its place in society.
Excerpt
The Noise of Time
And so, it had all begun, very precisely, on the morning of the 28th of January 1936, in Arkhangelsk. He had been invited to perform his first piano concerto with the local orchestra under Viktor Kubatsky; the two of them had also played his new cello sonata. It had gone well. The next morning he went to the railway station to buy a copy of Pravda. He had looked at the front page briefly, then turned to the next two. It was, as he would later put it, the most memorable day of his life. And a date he chose to mark each year until his death.
Except that—as his mind obstinately argued back—nothing ever begins as precisely as that. It began in different places, and in different minds. The true starting point might have been his own fame. Or his opera. Or it might have been Stalin, who, being infallible, was therefore responsible for everything. Or it could have been caused by something as simple as the layout of an orchestra. Indeed, that might finally be...
Far from feeling cheated out of more biographical information or details of the man’s creative process, I felt very much in touch with Shostakovich’s heart and his struggle to maintain some semblance of the standard of integrity he’d set for himself. Barnes lets us hover over the composer’s life, peep into his thoughts, and envision what life under tyranny is like for the creative mind of the genius. From youth to old age when, “his mind no longer skittered,” but, “limped carefully from one anxiety to the next,” Shostakovich became more alive than an account of the sum of his experiences...continued
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(Reviewed by Donna Chavez).
In Julian Barnes' The Noise of Time, Dmitri Shostakovich notes that under Stalin, "[Russians] would listen to [Stalin's] insane daily insistence that all was for the best in the best possible of worlds, that Paradise had been created, or would be created quite soon…when a few more saboteurs had been shot. That happier times would come." He makes tongue-in-cheek references to Stalin as The Helmsman and The Great Leader who has been imbued with supernatural powers – and whose Cult of Personality is far-reaching and incapable of error.
According to Wikipedia, "A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods to create an idealized, heroic, and at times worshipful image, often ...
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