The Noise of Time: A Novel (Vintage International)

I had often thought of writing a novel about Shostakovitch. For years he was a composer relatively non grata and minimally performed in the U.S., the same for Richard Strauss - for both due to their presumed complicity with their respective regimes. While there certainly were those who were complicit and condemnable for their complicity (e.g. Heidegger) there were many others, who given the circumstances, were almost heroic in their complicity, or, as Barnes would put it, in their cowardice. The horrors of daily life in Stalinist times are almost unimaginable to us, where every day you saw family, friends and neighbors, no matter how famous, politically powerful, revered or renowned, disappear into the maw of the Stalinist terror state. Of everything I have read about Shostakovitch, this brilliantly conceived and written portrait most succinctly, and almost poetically, leads you into the reality of Shostakovitch’s life of compromise, torment and dogged implacable productive genius. He concentrates on a few incidents in the composer's life - Barnes’ 12-year cycle of the Shostakovitch phoenix being destroyed and slowly rising again from its own ashes - seasoned with the occasional telling detail from his daily life. He brings Shostakovitch to life even more powerfully than Volkov's now relatively unquestioned earlier portrait of the "real Shostakovitch" in his "Testimony"Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich. In the same way as the novelist Martin Amis presents the most powerfully succinct portrait of Stalin I have ever read in his "Koba the Dread"Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million (Vintage International), Julian Barnes does the same for Shostakovitch. The number of books published on the lives of both Stalin and Shostakovitch has now reached staggering proportions, but for the most concentrated and powerful portraits of these two men, both of them human-all-too-human - but at precisely opposite poles so far as their humanity is concerned - you could do no better than to read these two books. There is almost nothing about Shostakovitch’s music in this book. For example, you will not come away from this book knowing that in the estimation of many the genius of Shostakovitch’s symphonies pales in comparison to that of his string quartets. But that is no great omission. There are many other wonderful guides to his music and the circumstances under which each composition was written (one rarely mentioned among English reviewers is Krzysztof Meyer's superbly written and researched “Dmitri Shostakovitch: His Life, His Work, His Times”)Dmitri Schostakowitsch. Sein Leben, sein Werk, seine Zeit.. In this portrait of Shostakovitch, in addition to what we learn about Shostakovitch, we also learn a great deal about Julian Barnes, about his humanity, his compassion, his political wisdom and his understanding of the complexities of the non-engineerable human spirit. A count of my highlighted passages would put this among the best books I've read in recent years (perhaps along with Camus' recently published “Notebooks 1951-1959”Notebooks 1951-1959) for sheer quotability. This book is a treasure and an inspiration for us all trying to lead our elfin Shostakovitch-like lives in our much more morally compromising times - because for us the price of NOT compromising is so INFINITELY LESS than it was for Shostakovitch and his fellow Russians.

As a fervid fan of Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich and his music, I knew I had to read this book when I first found out about it. The Shostakovich depicted in this novel is largely in agreement with the Shostakovich I got to know via his music, which is to say that the novel, despite its fictional nature, is certainly true to the spirit of Shostakovich's music, at least in my opinion. Knowing Shostakovich's music, I find the novel really enjoyable to read, with all its references to specific works by Shostakovich.In terms of the writing, I find the thoughts and emotions om the novel more interesting than the style of writing. There are some pretty powerful remarks throughout the novel - some thoughtful, some emotional; some made me laugh, some made me tear up. I find it particularly interesting how as the story unfolds, one begins to identify recurring 'motifs' that are associated with very specific and subtle feelings, which is analogous to Shostakovich's music! The novel contains few surprises and almost seems intentionally vapid at times, which, arguably, could be a style that the author was striving for. The tone of the novel is dark, but not nearly as dark in comparison to much of Shostakovich's music.I think anyone who enjoys Shostakovich's music would have something to gain from reading this novel, and will probably enjoy it. I find it unlikely that someone will get 'offended' by the fictional narrative, as the author is clearly very careful about what to assume and what not to assume. There is little to none pretentious, insincere drama, which is nice. It is certainly a tribute to Shostakovich's life.

Friday, June 03, 2016 11:37 PMFriday’s here—and just as I often don’t get fully awake before noon, I feel like I’m just getting warmed up whenever the end of the week rolls around. Old and in poor health is no way to suck the marrow from life. But I find I have company, or rather, competition.That is to say that I’ve just finished reading Julian Barnes’ excellent historical novel, “The Noise of Time: A Novel”, touching on the life of Dmitri Shostakovich—a Russian composer of the Soviet era, and a favorite of mine since my early teens. I clearly remember mentioning the name to my mother one day, mispronouncing it, and being surprised that she corrected my pronunciation of his name—firstly because I realized he was famous enough for my mother to know his name, and secondly because I had been enamored of his music for months, while saying his name wrong (I had been thinking of him as Shos-TOCK-ovich!)The Russians take pride in their deep sadness—as an American, I’ll never get that, but I get it, kind of. Masochism, irony, and melancholy are tools I have used myself in defense against a dysfunctional reality. But my life, and my troubles, are of an American smallness, in comparison to Barnes’ description of the living hell Shostakovich found himself in. He was a sensitive composer trapped in Stalin’s Russia, forced to publicly denounce his own works, and the works of his hero, Stravinsky—and other close friends and respected musicians; in danger for years from ideologues and politicians trying to ferret out disloyalty, even in thoughts and feelings, especially among artists—and even more especially in composers who had achieved global fame.The book reminded me of the stories I heard about Soviet Russians living in terror of anonymous squads who came and took them in the night, often never to be seen again—and about the ideological tyranny that deposed aesthetics as the yardstick against which their art was ‘measured’—and sometimes condemned, along with the artist’s life.Stalin’s rule, up to 1953, was so bloody that upon his death and the ascension of Khrushchev, it was said that ‘the Soviet had become vegetarian’. Although it may be more proper to say that the Soviet ceased to be cannibalistic, since Stalin’s machine had been devouring his own people. And Shostakovich was apparently a pretty nervous fellow—at the height of the pseudo-ideological criticisms of his music, he spent every night, for weeks, waiting at the elevator to be taken away by the KGB so that they wouldn’t have to burst into his apartment and drag him away in front of his wife and child. Barnes’ writes that Dmitri was just one of many people who observed this nighttime ritual during the terror known as Stalin’s Cult of Personality. Shostakovich’s life was one horror show after another—and it didn’t help that he was fairly well-off, compared to the average Soviet Russian—that just gave him more to lose.As a boy, my favorite of his works was the last movement of his fifth symphony—but as I matured, I learned to prefer the rest of the symphony. According to Barnes’ story, Shostakovich was forced to add the final ‘triumphal’ movement to the symphony because the foregoing movements were so unremittingly ‘pessimistic’—and so he composed the final movement ironically. To my callow ears, and to the politburo, it sounded glorious (which saved Shostakovich’s life, and career)—but as my tastes matured I came to find the last movement somehow brash and ugly, and prefer the music that comes before—and now I know why, I suppose. Much is made in the book of the fact that when confronted with brainless tyranny, the only safe rebellion is in irony—but that irony over time gets lost in itself.This book is no happy story, but it is something perhaps better—a fascinating story about strange and awful truths, and the horrendous lies that hide them, for a time at least. I have long since given up hope of finding in great artists’ lives any kind of reflection or explanation of the exaltation of their creations—but this book actually matches up the bleakness heard in most of his music with the day-to-day life of its composer. I read it in one sitting—something I’m only pushed into nowadays by irresistibly good writing and an enthralling story.Barnes quotes Shakespeare at one point, mentioning that his Sonnet LXVI resonated with the artists of Soviet Russia, particularly the line, “And art made tongue-tied by authority”. I had to go look at the whole poem and I am struck, not for the first time, by how apropos Shakespeare always is, no matter how modern we think we have become:Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,As to behold desert a beggar born,And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,And purest faith unhappily forsworn,And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd,And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd,And strength by limping sway disabledAnd art made tongue-tied by authority,And folly—doctor-like—controlling skill,And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,And captive good attending captain ill:Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone,Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.(Shakespeare, William (2011-03-24). Shakespeare's Sonnets (p. 132). . Kindle Edition.)I love that line about “And folly—doctor-like—controlling skill,”—geniuses so often appear to fools as people who need to be ‘cured’, or at the very least, ‘corrected’. The poem as a whole is fitting for a Shostakovich biographical novel—he too was often temped by thoughts of suicide, harried by the ubiquitous surplus of malevolent injustice crowding every aspect of his life.