Zubin Mehta: The Score of My Life

I am not as "well-read" in the music world as I would sometimes like to be. Before coming across Zubin Mehta: The Score of My Life, the autobiography of an apparently world-renowned conductor, while searching for a book whose title began with the letter "Z" (for one of my many reading challenges), I had never heard of Zubin Mehta. I have heard of many of his friends and the musicians and singers with whom he has worked, but not him.

In this book, Mehta tells us his story...from growing up in India, a member of the minority Parsi religious group, to his musical education in Vienna to his growing career as a world-reknowned conductor. For the most part the story is very well-told. I felt as if I were sitting with Mehta and listening to him tell me his story out loud. I would not say that he rambles, but one story leads to another the way stories often do when you're just sitting around chatting with your friends. It makes me wonder if he wrote this autobiography by hand or recorded his thoughts verbally and then transcribed them to written form. The feel of the book has me strongly favoring the latter.

Although I have long been a minor fan of classical music (it was always my favorite background music for studying in college) and have a very small knowledge of composers and their works, it was a real treat to be taken inside the world of classical music and the way the conductors and orchestras bring these works to the public. I very much enoyed Mehta's stories and they were made all the more enjoyable with the interludes from his personal life. Make no mistake, this is a professional autobiography. Mehta is telling the story of how he became a conductor who worked with orchestras from the New York Philharmonic to the Israel Philharmonic to leading the Munich Opera Festival performances. The more personal stories merely serve as a counterpoint to the rest.

My only quibbles (and for this my musical background may be at fault) are with some of the technical descriptions. Musical terminology that the average reader may not be familiar with and which make it hard to follow. I also became a bit bogged down in the sections where he went from description of one practice session (and how that didn't work so well) to the next. But overall, this is a very informative book, told for the most part in a very conversational tone that was highly enjoyable. Three and a half stars.

Challenges Complete!

I've been a bit neglectful in reporting my challenge successes. So far, I have completed my commitments for TWO (yes, two) reading challenges:

First, the A-Z Mystery Author Challenge sponsored by Michelle at Red Headed Book Child. I signed up for Authors with last names A-I and completed that commitment on February 8th with the following list:

A: The Fashion in Shrouds by Margery Allingham (1/25/11)

B: A Flaw in the Blood by Stephanie Barron (1/30/11)

C: All Booked Up by Terrie Curran (2/5/11)

D: A Graveyard to Let by Carter Dickson (1/31/11)

E: Publish & Be Murdered by Ruth Dudley Edwards (1/19/11)

F: Flying Finish by Dick Francis (1/29/11)

G: The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katharine Green (2/8/11)

H: Why Shoot a Butler? by Georgette Heyer (2/2/11)

I: Death in the Garden by Elizabeth Ironside (2/4/11)

As mentioned on my Challenge post, I will probably go ahead and keep reading through the alphabet, but my declared challenge level has been met.

Second up, The Dewey Decimal Challenge is sponsored by The Introverted Reade. I completed the Master level (4 books) on February 14th, but as with the A-Z Mystery Author Challenge, I'll still be reading non-fiction books. I've got about three more on my lists for other challenges. Here's what my completed list looks like:
1. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald: An American Woman's Life by Linda Wagner-Martin (2/14/11)
2. Live or Die by Anne Sexton (1/21/11)
3. Time to Be in Earnest: a fragment of autobiography by P. D. James (1/18/11)
4. The X in Sex: How the X Chromosome Controls Our Lives by David Bainbridge (1/21/11)
Wow, two of my challenges down....maybe I need to go find a few more. After all I am a Challenge Addict, you know!

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald: An American Woman's Life

According to the blurb: "Linda Wagner-Martin has created a new kind of biography of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald: Zelda's story from her perspective, instead of her famous husband's. This is the first biography to tell her entire life story, describing what it meant to be born in 1900, and then to be a "New Woman" in Montgomery, Alabama. Featuring for the first time information from the newly available archives at Princeton, Wagner-Martin vividly illustrates Zelda's psychiatric landscape. Detailed discussions of the roots of alcoholism and infidelity are juxtaposed with the first comprehensive critiques of Zelda's diverse artistic accomplishments as a dancer, short story writer, essayist and novelist. This is an evocative portrayal of a talented woman's professional and emotional conflicts, a story with as much relevance today as it had half a century ago."

Overall, I would say this is true...although I would add the caveat that this book does not produce quite the separation of Zelda's story from that of "F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife" as I was led to believe. A great amount of the material is told from the perspective of Zelda as wife to the "great writer." And how that affected her. Quite honestly, I don't see any other way for the story to be told. Once Zelda married him, there was not going back to "just Zelda." Every time she tried to assert herself--whether through her own writing or her dancing--Scott took control or forced himself to the forefront. Even to the point of claiming some of her short stories as his own.

In the end this is a very sad story. It would seem that Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was a very talented woman in her own right. She had a great gift as a ballet dance and with the written word. Without the influence of alcohol and Scott's need to control every aspect of her life, she might well have been as prominent a literary figure as her husband. It is a very compelling story of the struggle of women during the early part of the 20th century to assert themselves as more than just appendages to their husbands--to be able to develop their own talents and to feel worthwhile as something more than just wives, mothers, and housekeepers. Three and a half stars.

Time to Be in Earnest: Review

Time to Be in Earnest: a fragment of autobiography is P. D. James's response to Dr. Johnson's advice that seventy-seven is "a time to be in earnest." The much celebrated and beloved writer of mystery novels has created a luminous memoir of one year of her life. During the course of that year she not only relates experiences of the current time, but travels in time to give the reader snapshots of her life. These snapshots are vivid--full of descriptive clarity and beautiful language, only to be expected from such an accomplished writer.

It would be hard to do full justice to this memoir in a review. The entries are so varied that one could only give the full flavor by recounting each and every one. James covers everything in this memoir from the elusive quality of memory to why women seem to dominate the mystery field (and if, in fact, they really do). She talks about numerous fellow authors, from Ruth Rendell to Dick Francis, without gossip and with genuine affection.

It was, in fact, difficult to do full justice to this memoir reading it straight through as I did. I think it would have been better to savour the entries over a longer period of time, perhaps in daily readings over the course of the year just as the memoir was written. There is so much here to absorb and consider. And I think it a mark of how much this book has affected me that I have numerous slips of paper peppered throughout--marking passages that I want to go back and reread and possibly add to my quote collection. Thus earning this memoir four and a half stars out of five.

In the last days of this memoir, James gave a talk at the annual meeting of the Jane Austen Society. The entire address is given in an appendix to the memoir and is entitled "Emma Considered as a Detective Story. Someone who commented on my review of Emma suggested that reading these insights by James might better inform my reading of Emma (I wasn't a fan of this particular Austen novel) and that it changed her entire view of the book.

I readily admit all of James's points that give parallels to the detective novel. 1. That we have facts that are "hidden" but which the reader should be able to discover by logical deduction from clues inserted in the novel. 2. That we have a reconciliation of those mysterious facts which brings order when the previously misinterpreted facts are seen in their true light. 3. That we have a self-contained set of characters forced into a sometimes unwilling proximity. However, none of this changes my opinion of the novel. In fact, it just might lower it. You see, if I am to compare Emma to a detective novel, then I would want that comparison to be positive. A good detective novel, in my opinion, presents the reader with all the clues and keeps him or her thoroughly mystified until the final unravelling. As far as I can see the only one mystified in Emma is Emma herself. I recognized the truth behind the "misinterpreted facts" early on. I was quite certain I knew who sent the piano to Jane (and was right). As a mystery novel, Emma fails for me, every bit as much as it did as a serious novel. Sorry, but Emma still remains one of my least favorite Austen novels.

The Dewey Decimal Challenge

And...while I'm at it...I'll just sign up for this one too.


The Dewey Decimal Challenge is sponsored by The Introverted Reader. It has been designed as "a simple, general non-fiction challenge."

Read any non-fiction book(s), adult or young adult. That's it. You can choose anything. Poetry? Yes. Memoirs? Yes. History? Yes. Travel? Yes. You get the idea? Absolutely anything that is classified as non-fiction counts for this challenge. I always like levels in my challenges, so here are mine:

Dilettante--Read 1 non-fiction book.
Explorer--Read 2
Seeker--Read 3
Master--Read 4

This challenge will last from January 1 to December 31, 2011.

I am signing up for the Master level. Here is my list:
1. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald: An American Woman's Life by Linda Wagner-Martin (2/14/11)
2. Live or Die by Anne Sexton (1/21/11)
3. Time to Be in Earnest: a fragment of autobiography by P. D. James (1/18/11)
4. The X in Sex: How the X Chromosome Controls Our Lives by David Bainbridge (1/21/11)
Master's Level Complete 2/14/11, but still reading!
5. Zubin Mehta: The Score of My Life by Zubin Mehta (2/21/11)