The Noise of Time

The book, by the way, was The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes. I had suggested the title, which meant I would lead the discussion. Hence my eagerness to read it.

It was an imagined biography of Russian composer Shostakovich during three periods of his life. It is the story of trying to walk the line between artistic integrity and survival in the Soviet Union. How does a sensitive, somewhat neurotic artist deal with the daily threat of arrest and exile to a Siberian labour camp?

I enjoyed the book and was especially grateful that it was short :-) I have great admiration for musicians and their abilities to conceive of all the strands that go into a piece of music, then capture these ideas with a lot of little black dots so that an orchestra can turn the composer’s concepts into reality. Doing that work in the face of authoritarian censors is an especially impressive trick.
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