And a very sonorously happy birthday to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, born this day in 1756!
There are plenty of details about Mozart’s life that you can find in print and online–his precocious musical talent, which showed itself in his early childhood…he could write music before he could write works…he composed his first symphony in 1764 (at the age of eight), and toured Europe with his musically gifted sister, Maria Anna, and his father, a minor court musician….he had flamboyant taste in clothes (thought the film Amadeus wildly over-emphasized Mozart’s eccentricities, it is ture that he loved wearing bright colors and ultra-modern fashions)….but we don’t always talk about the human aspects of the great man, and I think those details are the best parts.
He and his wife, Constanze loved each other to the point of recklessness. Before their marriage, when both their parents were refusing to agree to their engagement, Constanze moved into Mozart’s apartment (a move that would have utterly disgraced her in society), and refused to leave, even after her mother threatened to send the police in to fetch her ( “Can the police here enter anyone’s house in this way?” Mozart asked in a letter to a friend in 1782. “Perhaps it is only a ruse of Madame Weber to get her daughter back. If not, I know no better remedy than to marry Constanze tomorrow morning or if possible today.”)
He was terrible at deadlines. Surviving letters from Mozart’s father to his mother, written while during a visit to Mozart’s house in Vienna, talks about Mozart completing the composition he was to play that night by using on the backs of the movers who had come to transport his piano. While they walked his piano across the square (Mozart refused to play any other instrument), he followed, writing on the back of the mover.
And he had weird ears, as you can see in the painting below, which was done either by Mozart himself, or his son. To this day, congenital abnormalities in the outer structure of the human ear is known as “Mozart’s Ear“.
If you’d like to learn a bit more about Mozart, the wonderful people at the British Library have digitized his notebooks, which you can look through (note the lack of cross-outs and errors) at this link. And here is a stunning performance of Mozart’s Requiem, his final composition (and my personal favorite), to give your day a little harmony. Enjoy!
And now…on to the books!
The Strays: Emily Bitto’s debut novel won the 2015 Stella Prize, another women’s only prize, though this one is limited to Australian women, an achievement that no doubt helped it’s comparatively quick arrival to our shelves. Set in the highly conservative and restrictive Australia of the 1930’s, the story centers around Lily, the only child of ordinary, decent, slightly anxious parents, who are still trying to recover from the Great Depression. On her first day of school, Lily makes friends with Eva Trentham and her sisters, daughters of a famous avant-garde artist, and finds herself adopted into a world of bohemian culture and artistic revelries. But the creative chaos of the Trentham’s world obscures the teen-aged rebellions, harsh familial ties, and secrets that it will take a lifetime for Lily to begin to unravel. Fans of Brideshead Revisited and Atonement will find a great deal to enjoy here, and, as the Stella prize committee noted, “Its originality is of a rather retro kind: in an era when it has become fashionable to the point of being almost the norm for novelists to adapt or fictionalise the life stories of real people, The Strays has the ring of originality in its richly and fully imagined vision…like a gemstone: polished and multifaceted, reflecting illuminations back to the reader and holding rich colour in its depths.”
Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes: Since it’s publication, no generation has been without its own adaptation (or two…or three…) of The Great Detective, but we are living in a time when all things Sherlock are as new and hip as when Conan Doyle first began publishing his stories in The Strand. And in this surprisingly fun, informative book, literary investigator Michael Sims takes us through a tour of Doyle’s life, and the many events, people, and places that inspired his 56 short stories and 4 novels featuring Holmes and Watson. He also studies Holmes’ literary predecessors, showing us how Holmes was a both a product of his times, and still uniquely timeless. This isn’t quite a literary biography, or a cultural analysis–it’s a little of both, and done with so much heart and verve that it makes a surprisingly erudite work feel like enormous fun. Bookpage agrees, saying in its review, “Michael Sims traces some of Doyle’s grand adventures, including expeditions to the polar icecap and Africa, and shows how they became fodder for his early prose. . . . There is something in this marvelous book for everyone, and short, vivid chapters keep the pages turning. From early reviewers who couldn’t spell Doyle’s name to grand lunches with famous magazine editors alongside Oscar Wilde, Sims knows how to paint a picture that fascinates and delights.”
Homesick for Another World: Booker Prize shortlisted author Ottessa Moshfegh is getting the literary world all abuzz once again with her first collection of short stories, which all feature that odd, unsettled, unsettling sense of displacement that homesick so easily induces. It’s really tricky to provide any synopses without giving away the punch and interest of these stories, so let me sum up in this way: The characters here are remarkably, beautifully, often frightening real, indulging in acts of stupidity, violence, love, and cunning with equal ease, and each holding a fascinating, almost grotesque, sense of individuality that is sometimes shocking, sometimes brazenly funny, and sometimes genuinely disturbing. The result is a work that many are hailing as Moshfegh’s triumph, even more so than her award-nominated Eileen, and has critics both joyful and astounded. The Associated Press enthused that this book, “couldn’t come at a better time. Notions of class and power are in an unpredictable flux. A new elite rises, flipping the deck into the air. Nobody knows where the cards will land. So here comes Moshfegh, whose imaginative writing about train-wreck characters, rich and poor, adheres to a relentlessly dim worldview where a divided America comes together in the muck.”
The Fifth Petal: Local bestselling author Brunonia Barry’s latest work weaves a dark tale about the power of the past, and the compelling power of a place to remember, featuring characters that many readers will remember from The Lace Reader. Following the suspicious death of a teenaged boy on Halloween night, Salem’s chief of police, John Rafferty, now married to gifted lace reader Towner Whitney, realizes that there may be a connection between this death and Salem’s most notorious cold case, a triple homicide dubbed “The Goddess Murders,” in which three young women, all descended from accused Salem witches, were slashed on Halloween night in 1989. The main suspect in the case is a respected local historian named Rose Whelan–a woman that John cannot imagine in such a sinister role. But John’s attempt to exonerate Rose raises some truly troubling questions–are the forces he is pursuing human? Or was something much darker brought to Salem on that long-ago night? Booklist gave this novel a starred review, saying, in their delightfully alliterative review, that “Barry fans will welcome the return of beloved characters and the introduction of new ones into a contemporary Salem appropriately fraught with remnants and reminders of its dark and twisted history. This spooky, multilayered medley of mysteries is sure to be a bestseller.”
Schadenfreude, a Love Story: The full title of this delightful books is Schadenfreude, a Love Story: Me, the Germans, and 20 Years of Attempted Transformations, Unfortunate Miscommunications, and Humiliating Situations, which gives you some ideas about the good-hearted, but piercingly insightful and funny adventure of Slate columnist Rebecca Schuman, a young Jewish girl who, in the early 1990’s, fell in love with a boy who broke her heart, and a culture and a language that seemed determined not to love her back. But this real-life coming of age novel is indeed a love story of sorts, focusing on Schuman’s attempts to find herself and her place within a new and often bewildering world, of the German people, trying valiantly to unite after decades of separation and enormously desperate life experiences, and of all the adventures, misunderstandings, and moments of utter joy that were had along the way. This is a travelogue for literature lovers and waderlust readers alike, and Publisher’s Weekly says “Schuman entertains while relating her inner conflicts, personal and cultural hypocrisies, and overblown self-delusions during her decades-long struggle with the German language and those who speak it. Schuman’s engrossing book is a feast of honesty, humility and humor, all the hallmarks of great confessional literature.”
Until next week, beloved patrons–happy reading, and happy listening!