Book 1 - Richard Powers, Orfeo

A socially isolated composer/retired university lecturer (Peter Els) is privately conducting biological experiments, trying to create new strands of DNA, for artistic reasons. This comes to the attention of the the security services who think it can only be  terrorism or at the least dangerously threatening. They draw parallels with the personality of the Unabomber. The house is raided, the experiments seized but they miss Els, who goes on the run. This sounds like a good set up for a conventional thriller with scope for the excitement of the chase. It is the outline of Orfeo but the book is nothing like a thriller and the set-up is only a Macguffin to allow the real subject (art music and the cultural ideas which shaped it in the last half of the Twentieth Century) to be discussed. There is no real peril, no twists and turns, no thrill of the chase but there is enough reason for Els to move out of his quiet life, remember his past and visit some people who were significant to him. As structure it also works mythically: you know that if Els is captured he will enter the dark underworld that is state security and might never re-emerge.But it is not too fanciful and it reminds me in some ways of Christopher Jeffries, the man vilified by the press for being a bit weird after his tenant was murdered. There was a tv play about him that was very good in showing how an innocent man (in both senses) could be pulled underground by the misunderstanding or lack of comprehension by law enforcement officers.

This though is a book of ideas and it shows how good the novel can be for taking disparate ideas, ramming them together, and making connections. Here there is science and the world described in "Biopunk: solving biotech biggest problems in kitchens and garages" by Marcus Wohlsen, which is about the amateur tinkering with genetics being done in home labs,  side by side with “The Rest is Noise”, the wonderful survey of Twentieth Century music by Alex Ross, which is chock full of anecdotes from composers’ lives. They are mixed together in the character of Els offer interesting parallels between art and science, structures and the act of creation. The book isn’t didactic and overly ernest (it is after all a novel) nevertheless at its heart there is the story of music and its creation in the second half of the last century. Perhaps, even more ambitiously, it also tries to describe how music feels subjectively, how it creates sensations, and how it works. Some of these abstract passages might seem pretentious and/or obscure but if they don’t connect they can be slid over. However they could only have been written by someone with a deep musical knowledge and they feel as if the author is writing about something he cares about, and you trust him.

I am a little younger than Els, but not by so many years. The times being remembered are my times. Perhaps this is why I can relate to the content because I recognise the hopes, assumptions and discussions that took place back then. I know the arts were seen as something to aspire to as part of the project to discard the old and stultifying, and discover the new. For sure that lead to many dead ends and the dreams and talk can now appear ridiculously idealistic or naive but when things came together there could be magic. Sometimes performances or works could fly with a joyful seriousness.

But back to the book.

Things I enjoyed:

The structure - There are no chapters, instead the text is divided by boxed quotes or phrases. These quotes are not part of the narrative but comment on it and add something from the outside the narrative often in the voice of Peter Els: “I’d been hearing that tune for sixty years. Musical taste change so little” or “a grammar but no dictionary, sense but no meaning, urgency without need: music and chemistry of cells.” The sort of half formed thoughts that can bubble into the consciousness before floating away. It is a neat way of giving the narrative another layer.

Stories of composers - This might be a backhanded compliment for a novel but I enjoyed the historical anecdotes. One of the most gripping sections was the description of how Messian’s “Quartet for the End of Time” was created and performed in a prisoner of war camp. This though is not just a Wikipedia entry it is a re imagining: “The audience crowds together on the benches, wrapped in grey-black coats. Clouds of frozen breath fill the room, whiffs of rotting guts exuded by malnourished men in oil stained rags. What heat the barrack manages on this bone numbing night comes only from these wasted bodies. Infirm men from the hospital block are borne in on stretchers. The music loving German soldiers take their reserved seats in the front rows.” It puts you there.

It is well researched; you can trust the information.

it is a book about art, though the art in question is music. “He’d learn the truth from Thomas Mann later that semester. Art was combat, an exhausting struggle. And it was impossible to stay fit for long. Music wasn’t about learning how to love. It was learning what to disown and when to disown it. Even the most magnificent piece would end up as collateral damage in the endless war over taste.” I like books that struggle with the compulsion for art, its value and ultimate utility.

What’s not so good:

It is more or less within the head of Peter Els. The other characters are sketchy. But in a book of ideas that is not that much of a big deal.

Date of publication
2014

References:

Wikipedia
Guardian Review by Steven Poole

Randomness factor:

It was selected from the Booker Mann 2014 longlist. So not very random as it had been pre-selected as a good novel. (I don't know why it didn't make the final but neverheless it had a good cup run).