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A compact masterpiece dedicated to the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich--Julian Barnes's first novel since his best-selling, Booker Prize-winning The Sense of an Ending. 1936: Shostakovich, just thirty, fears for his livelihood and his life. Stalin, hitherto a distant figure, has taken a sudden interest in his work and denounced his latest opera. Now, certain he will be exiled to Siberia (or, more likely, shot dead on the spot), he reflects on his predicament, his personal history, his parents, various women and wives, his children all of those hanging in the balance of his fate. And though a stroke of luck prevents him from becoming yet another casualty of the Great Terror, for years to come he will be held fast under the thumb of despotism: made to represent Soviet values at a cultural conference in New York City, forced into joining the Party, and compelled, constantly, to weigh appeasing those in power against the integrity of his music. Barnes elegantly guides us through the trajectory of Shostakovich's career, at the same time illuminating the tumultuous evolution of the Soviet Union. The result is both a stunning portrait of a relentlessly fascinating man and a brilliant meditation on the meaning of art and its place in society.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member EBT1002
"Why, he wondered, had Power now turned its attention to music, and to him? Power had always been more interested in the word than the note: writers, not composers, had been proclaimed the engineers of human souls. Writers were condemned on page one of Pravda, composers on page three. Two pages
"Art belongs to everybody and nobody. Art belongs to all time and no time. Art belongs to those who create it and those who savour it. Art no more belongs to the People and the Party than it once belonged to the aristocracy and the patron. Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time."
This was almost a five-star read. Told from the point of view of composer Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich, the narrative spans his life from age 30, in fear for his and his family's lives after his most recent Symphony falls into Stalin's disfavor, through shifts in Soviet Russia and into the years of Khrushchev's "gentling" of the Power imposed by the Soviet regime. The beauty of the writing is the captivating voice Barnes creates for the embattled and embittered composer; the reader is transported deeply inside Shostakovich's mind. It's not always a pretty place to be but it rings perfectly true. The novel provides an excursion through the vagaries of Stalinist Russia from within Shostakovich's mind. But its power is its evocation of his terror, resignation, and his contemplation of the question of the permanence of anything that matters and the power of art to inspire and redeem the human soul.
If you want to be told a story, this is not the novel for you. If you want to mill about in a composer's mind, one who was closely monitored and threatened by the Soviet state, this is the perfect book to pick up next. I do wish I had read a biography of Shostakovich before reading this novel. I plan to do that (in the form of Symphony for the City of the Dead) and then to return to this special work of art. I suspect that enhanced knowledge, on my part, will translate into bestowing upon The Noise of Time the coveted five-star rating.
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apart. And yet it was not nothing: it could make the difference between life and death.""Art belongs to everybody and nobody. Art belongs to all time and no time. Art belongs to those who create it and those who savour it. Art no more belongs to the People and the Party than it once belonged to the aristocracy and the patron. Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time."
This was almost a five-star read. Told from the point of view of composer Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich, the narrative spans his life from age 30, in fear for his and his family's lives after his most recent Symphony falls into Stalin's disfavor, through shifts in Soviet Russia and into the years of Khrushchev's "gentling" of the Power imposed by the Soviet regime. The beauty of the writing is the captivating voice Barnes creates for the embattled and embittered composer; the reader is transported deeply inside Shostakovich's mind. It's not always a pretty place to be but it rings perfectly true. The novel provides an excursion through the vagaries of Stalinist Russia from within Shostakovich's mind. But its power is its evocation of his terror, resignation, and his contemplation of the question of the permanence of anything that matters and the power of art to inspire and redeem the human soul.
If you want to be told a story, this is not the novel for you. If you want to mill about in a composer's mind, one who was closely monitored and threatened by the Soviet state, this is the perfect book to pick up next. I do wish I had read a biography of Shostakovich before reading this novel. I plan to do that (in the form of Symphony for the City of the Dead) and then to return to this special work of art. I suspect that enhanced knowledge, on my part, will translate into bestowing upon The Noise of Time the coveted five-star rating.
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LibraryThing member Crazymamie
"Turgenev was not to his literary taste: too civilised, not fantastical enough. He preferred Pushkin and Chekhov, and Gogol best of all. But even Turgenev, for all his faults, had a true Russian pessimism. Indeed, he understood that to be Russian was to be pessimistic. He had also written that,
It's truly amazing what Julian Barnes was able to say with so few words. This fictional biography is stunning. It's polished very near to perfection, and in less than 200 pages, the complicated life and sophisticated music of a composer is laid bare before us. And yet it doesn't feel short. Or succinct. It feels agonizingly long - I cannot imagine being in Dmitri Shostakovich's place; it must have been unbearable, and yet he did bear it.
"Yes, he loved Shakespeare; before the war, he had written the music for a stage production of Hamlet. Who could doubt that Shakespeare had a profound understanding of the human soul and the human condition? Was there a greater portrayal of the shattering of human illusions than King Lear? No, that was not quite right: not shattering, because that implied a single great crisis. Rather, what happened to human illusions was that they crumbled, they withered away. It was a long and wearisome process, like a toothache reaching far into the soul. But you can pull out a tooth and it will be gone. Illusions, however, even when dead, continue to rot and stink within us. We cannot escape their taste and smell. We carry them around with us all the time. He did. "
What happens when you live your life the best that you can and it still is not good enough? Shostakovich knew this feeling well. He was eventually forced to join the Party, sign articles that he did not write, make speeches that he did not agree with and prostitute his music. He wanted to be stronger, but he was afraid. The writing here is so palpable that you feel that fear and that disgust and that disappointment in every page. He only wanted to be a composer; he could be a brilliant composer but he did not know how to fight a political system that was so corrupt that you never knew from day to day who would still be standing.
"Perhaps this was one of the tragedies life plots for us: it is our destiny to become in old age what in youth we would have most despised."
If you have not read anything about Shostakovich, I would not recommend starting here. Start with a biography or with Symphony for the City of the Dead, in fact, I highly recommend starting with the second one. It tells his story in a simple and straightforward manner with lots of background information on all the major players and lots of photographs. And it tells the story of just how amazing the writing and performing of his seventh symphony, the one written for Leningrad while it was under siege during WWII really was. It's not that you can't appreciate The Noise of Time without any prior knowledge of Shostakovich, it's just that you will get so much more from Barnes' writing if you do your homework first.
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however much you scrubbed a Russian, he would always remain a Russian. That was what Karlo-Marlo and their descendants had never understood. They wanted to be engineers of human souls; but Russians, for all their faults, were not machines. So it was not really engineering they were up to, but scrubbing. Scrub, scrub, scrub, let's wash away all this old Russianess and paint a shiny new Sovietness on top. But it never worked - the paint began to flake off almost as soon as it was applied."It's truly amazing what Julian Barnes was able to say with so few words. This fictional biography is stunning. It's polished very near to perfection, and in less than 200 pages, the complicated life and sophisticated music of a composer is laid bare before us. And yet it doesn't feel short. Or succinct. It feels agonizingly long - I cannot imagine being in Dmitri Shostakovich's place; it must have been unbearable, and yet he did bear it.
"Yes, he loved Shakespeare; before the war, he had written the music for a stage production of Hamlet. Who could doubt that Shakespeare had a profound understanding of the human soul and the human condition? Was there a greater portrayal of the shattering of human illusions than King Lear? No, that was not quite right: not shattering, because that implied a single great crisis. Rather, what happened to human illusions was that they crumbled, they withered away. It was a long and wearisome process, like a toothache reaching far into the soul. But you can pull out a tooth and it will be gone. Illusions, however, even when dead, continue to rot and stink within us. We cannot escape their taste and smell. We carry them around with us all the time. He did. "
What happens when you live your life the best that you can and it still is not good enough? Shostakovich knew this feeling well. He was eventually forced to join the Party, sign articles that he did not write, make speeches that he did not agree with and prostitute his music. He wanted to be stronger, but he was afraid. The writing here is so palpable that you feel that fear and that disgust and that disappointment in every page. He only wanted to be a composer; he could be a brilliant composer but he did not know how to fight a political system that was so corrupt that you never knew from day to day who would still be standing.
"Perhaps this was one of the tragedies life plots for us: it is our destiny to become in old age what in youth we would have most despised."
If you have not read anything about Shostakovich, I would not recommend starting here. Start with a biography or with Symphony for the City of the Dead, in fact, I highly recommend starting with the second one. It tells his story in a simple and straightforward manner with lots of background information on all the major players and lots of photographs. And it tells the story of just how amazing the writing and performing of his seventh symphony, the one written for Leningrad while it was under siege during WWII really was. It's not that you can't appreciate The Noise of Time without any prior knowledge of Shostakovich, it's just that you will get so much more from Barnes' writing if you do your homework first.
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LibraryThing member aileverte
Although I have enjoyed Julian Barnes's books in the past (his Flaubert's Parrot remains a masterpiece, surpassing some of his later production; but I did not dislike The Sense of an Ending, for instance), I approached this volume with some skepticism: what insight, I thought, could a Western
Julian Barnes composed his book in short fragments, giving it a rather "airy" appearance. The second-person narration helps put a bit of distance between the speaking voice and the subject whose thoughts and recollections it ventriloquizes, and the paragraph spacing allows the story to move seamlessly between the present, concentrated in distinct moments of awkwardness (waiting on a fifth-floor landing for an ill-fated lift; a return flight from NY; a chauffeured car ride to the composer's dacha) and the past. As a result, the simple past of storytelling is heavily studded with past perfect, which generates the dizzying effect of spiraling into the workings of another's conscience.
The novel made me think of Czesław Miłosz's Captive Mind which traces four different positions vis-à-vis totalitarian authority and subtly shows how, in a mind captive to latent idealism of the regime, lines between freedom and slavery, courage and cowardice, right and wrong, become blurred and unrecognizable. Julian Barnes's dissection of Shostakovich's half-captive psyche comes quite close to Miłosz's.
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writer, who has not experienced fear under a totalitarian regime, have into a tortured Russian soul? Some book reviews also gave me the impression that the book was written as a first-person narrative, which alone seemed to doom it to failure. So it was without high hopes that I picked the book off the recent-arrivals shelf at the local public library. Not only was the book not bad, I found it rather engaging and, if not exactly revelatory, well-researched and insightful. It is clearly informed by readings of Solzhenitsyn, whose One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is mentioned at one point and whose work as a whole contains the best analysis to date of the oppressive individual and collective paranoia generated by an interminable reign of terror. Julian Barnes composed his book in short fragments, giving it a rather "airy" appearance. The second-person narration helps put a bit of distance between the speaking voice and the subject whose thoughts and recollections it ventriloquizes, and the paragraph spacing allows the story to move seamlessly between the present, concentrated in distinct moments of awkwardness (waiting on a fifth-floor landing for an ill-fated lift; a return flight from NY; a chauffeured car ride to the composer's dacha) and the past. As a result, the simple past of storytelling is heavily studded with past perfect, which generates the dizzying effect of spiraling into the workings of another's conscience.
The novel made me think of Czesław Miłosz's Captive Mind which traces four different positions vis-à-vis totalitarian authority and subtly shows how, in a mind captive to latent idealism of the regime, lines between freedom and slavery, courage and cowardice, right and wrong, become blurred and unrecognizable. Julian Barnes's dissection of Shostakovich's half-captive psyche comes quite close to Miłosz's.
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LibraryThing member thorold
Although it's framed as a biographical fiction about Shostakovich, that's almost a pretext: what Barnes is really interested in here is clearly the relationship between the creative artist and power. The artist may be a genius in his field, but he's still a human being, and not necessarily an
Shostakovich got a major ponck from Stalin after the opening of The Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District: after that he slowly worked his way out of official disfavour by compromising left, right and centre (or by ironically pretending to compromise: no-one quite knows, although plenty of people are still arguing about it), until he found himself being drawn uncomfortably close to power in the Khrushchev era.
Barnes tries to imagine what it might have been like to be inside Shostakovich's mind at those points. He doesn't really have any more evidence for that than we do, however, and he ends up with a character who is endearingly human and is undergoing the same kinds of fears and doubts that we might, but who somehow doesn't seem to have whatever it is about him that makes Shostakovich Shostakovich. We never get a real sense of him as someone whose life is built around music. In fact there's very little music in the book: most of the time, all that we hear is how other people have reacted to Shostakovich's music.
Interesting, but the effort Barnes must have put into researching this somehow seems disproportionate to the result.
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exceptionally brave or reckless one. What does it do to him if he's confronted by threats and demands he doesn't have it in him to resist? Shostakovich got a major ponck from Stalin after the opening of The Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District: after that he slowly worked his way out of official disfavour by compromising left, right and centre (or by ironically pretending to compromise: no-one quite knows, although plenty of people are still arguing about it), until he found himself being drawn uncomfortably close to power in the Khrushchev era.
Barnes tries to imagine what it might have been like to be inside Shostakovich's mind at those points. He doesn't really have any more evidence for that than we do, however, and he ends up with a character who is endearingly human and is undergoing the same kinds of fears and doubts that we might, but who somehow doesn't seem to have whatever it is about him that makes Shostakovich Shostakovich. We never get a real sense of him as someone whose life is built around music. In fact there's very little music in the book: most of the time, all that we hear is how other people have reacted to Shostakovich's music.
Interesting, but the effort Barnes must have put into researching this somehow seems disproportionate to the result.
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LibraryThing member Opinionated
Shostakovich and his struggles to maintain his artistic integrity in the face of the sometimes urgent, sometimes insinuating pressures of "Power" are brought to life beautifully in this short novel. As he gets older, Julian Barnes seems to need fewer and fewer words to get across what he needs to,
In this telling, Shostakovich is primarily driven by fear and the seeming inevitability of being crushed by Stalin's apparatus of repression - always referred to as "Power". The lasting image from the book is of the scared composer, standing every night outside his apartment by lift, with a small suitcase, waiting for the secret police to arrive (so that they don't disturb his wife). And yet, they don't come for him, whereas they do come for many of his peers. The paranoia of being one who remains, seems almost worse than being arrested (but of course, not actually worse).
Shostakovich is not portrayed as a hero, not even as a courageous man, although he does his best to stand up to Stalin in a telephone call where the Man himself smoothly persuades (but what choice does he really have?) the composer to join a cultural delegation to London. Its both a brave, pathetic and utterly futile resistance. Is he compromised - undoubtedly yes, both personally and artistically. In my opinion Barnes lets him off a little easily here but his point is to show the gradual assimilation of the composer and is ultimate submission to "Power"
Does it help to know something of the composer and his contemporaries to understand the book? Probably yes, but its not mandatory. Its an excellent book
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and this novel is short but intense, and primarily about Fear. In this telling, Shostakovich is primarily driven by fear and the seeming inevitability of being crushed by Stalin's apparatus of repression - always referred to as "Power". The lasting image from the book is of the scared composer, standing every night outside his apartment by lift, with a small suitcase, waiting for the secret police to arrive (so that they don't disturb his wife). And yet, they don't come for him, whereas they do come for many of his peers. The paranoia of being one who remains, seems almost worse than being arrested (but of course, not actually worse).
Shostakovich is not portrayed as a hero, not even as a courageous man, although he does his best to stand up to Stalin in a telephone call where the Man himself smoothly persuades (but what choice does he really have?) the composer to join a cultural delegation to London. Its both a brave, pathetic and utterly futile resistance. Is he compromised - undoubtedly yes, both personally and artistically. In my opinion Barnes lets him off a little easily here but his point is to show the gradual assimilation of the composer and is ultimate submission to "Power"
Does it help to know something of the composer and his contemporaries to understand the book? Probably yes, but its not mandatory. Its an excellent book
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LibraryThing member Clara53
Brilliant. Brilliant, bold and insightful. I started marking quotes while reading this novel and very soon realized that I wanted to quote from every page!!! The author so vividly describes the life of Shostakovich under "Power" (Stalin at first, then Khrushchev), the torment of being in
Julian Barnes writes with certain melancholy, and in his other two books that I read ("Staring at the Sun" and "The Sense of an Ending") I minded that a little bit. Not here. Here his melancholy seems totally justifiable. This novel is quite a gem.
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conflict with his own conscience as a composer, while trying to survive horrible conditions - with constant fear, constant hesitation, amazed and at the same time ashamed to have survived the doom that took away so many. To live so that "it was life he was afraid of, not death"... What kind of life is that (?)... Shostakovich's son Maxim has seen his father cry only twice: when his wife died and when he joined the Party - the latter obviously under unimaginable duress.... Talk about mental anguish... One could only survive in his shoes only with tons of irony as his means of defence. "Instead of killing him, they had allowed him to live, and by allowing him to live, they had killed him." There is no better way of putting it.Julian Barnes writes with certain melancholy, and in his other two books that I read ("Staring at the Sun" and "The Sense of an Ending") I minded that a little bit. Not here. Here his melancholy seems totally justifiable. This novel is quite a gem.
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LibraryThing member Laura400
A short book, with a great beginning, excellent structure and excellent writing, but for some reason it started to drag. It felt repetitive, perhaps: rather than going farther or deeper into the story, it seemed stuck in the same groove. Perhaps because the subject lived so recently, and this is
Not a bad book by any means, however -- just perhaps not enough meat there to sustain an entire novel. It will still be of particular interest to those who enjoy Russian history. And Barnes is an amazing writer, with a felicitous style that sometimes made me stop reading in pure admiration.
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based on actual biography, Barnes felt less free to elaborate and invent, and thus had to live with certain ellipses in Shostakovich's life as it is known to us.Not a bad book by any means, however -- just perhaps not enough meat there to sustain an entire novel. It will still be of particular interest to those who enjoy Russian history. And Barnes is an amazing writer, with a felicitous style that sometimes made me stop reading in pure admiration.
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LibraryThing member SigmundFraud
The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes is a stunning novel of the life of Shostakovich the composer in the context of Stalinist Russia. Artists including composer were not allowed the freedom to express themselves freely in this Communist society. Barnes shares with the reader the frequent close calls
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between Shostakovich and the Communist party. The composer refuses for many years to avoid joining the Party until he could no longer escape it. He reluctantly joined. The novel was relevant for me because the censorship in Russia was so reminiscent of the censorship of creeping political correctness in America today. It is frightening.This book like much of Barnes is worth a detour. Show Less
LibraryThing member louis69
I note that there are 33 reviews of this novel - what can I add except my personal reaction.
In the Author's Note, Julian Barnes writes: ' Elizabeth Wilson is paramount among those who have helped me with this novel. She supplied me with material I would never have come across, corrected many
I wanted to like it but I kept on thinking it wasn't a novel that it was biography. Why didn't he write a biography I kept wondering? Maybe it really is a fictional biography...
The main character is Dmitri Shostakovich and it is a novel of his living torture under Stalin and later on Khrushchev. Having been to St Petersburg helped me to fill in parts for myself. However it was a puzzling book.
In the Author's Note, Julian Barnes writes: ' Elizabeth Wilson is paramount among those who have helped me with this novel. She supplied me with material I would never have come across, corrected many
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misapprehensions, and read the typescript. But this is my book, not hers; and if you haven't liked mine read hers." I may in fact do that, as I struggled with this.I wanted to like it but I kept on thinking it wasn't a novel that it was biography. Why didn't he write a biography I kept wondering? Maybe it really is a fictional biography...
The main character is Dmitri Shostakovich and it is a novel of his living torture under Stalin and later on Khrushchev. Having been to St Petersburg helped me to fill in parts for myself. However it was a puzzling book.
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LibraryThing member Eyejaybee
Julian Barnes has had an illustrious writing career. His early novels such as 'Metroland'' gave notice of a talent beyond the normal, and his Booker-nominated 'Flaubert's Parrot' showed the scope of his imagination and his capacity to blend beguiling fiction with a strong factual basis. His talent
The Noise of Time' focuses on some of the key events in the life of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, and in particular his tempestuous relationship with the Soviet regime. As the book opens, he is waiting in his apartment building in 1936, expecting to be arrested and taken to face interrogation at 'The Big House'. This is following an unexpectedly acrimonious response to the premiere of one of his works, not least because of a slightly farcical performance which was itself caused by the orchestra's unease at the presence of Stalin and many other senior members of the regime.
Expecting that he will never return home, Shostakovich tries to prepare for the imminent grilling, and reflects on the unexpected course his life had followed up to that time. For various reasons, not all of which are made clear to him, or indeed to us, that grilling never happens. This does not, however, mean that he is free of future concern, and while his position within Soviet society is gradually rehabilitated, he recognises that it will only be a matter of time before he inadvertently transgresses the invisible demarcation lines again.
The novel showcases Barnes's lovely prose, though I did find the staccato delivery of mini-chapters, seldom in chronological order, detracted from, rather than added to, the cohesion of the story. The vignettes of Prokofiev and Stravinsky were very entertaining, and the overall impact of the book was informative, but somehow, and unusually for Julian Barnes, especially given the potentially fascinating subject matter, the story never quite ignited.
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has not been restricted simply to fiction, and he has enjoyed considerable success, both in Britain and in France, as an essayist, In 2011 he won the Booker Prize with 'The Sense of An Ending'. I was, therefore, looking forward to reading this novel but, as soon often seems to happen with books that I have been eagerly awaiting, in the event I found it slightly disappointing.The Noise of Time' focuses on some of the key events in the life of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, and in particular his tempestuous relationship with the Soviet regime. As the book opens, he is waiting in his apartment building in 1936, expecting to be arrested and taken to face interrogation at 'The Big House'. This is following an unexpectedly acrimonious response to the premiere of one of his works, not least because of a slightly farcical performance which was itself caused by the orchestra's unease at the presence of Stalin and many other senior members of the regime.
Expecting that he will never return home, Shostakovich tries to prepare for the imminent grilling, and reflects on the unexpected course his life had followed up to that time. For various reasons, not all of which are made clear to him, or indeed to us, that grilling never happens. This does not, however, mean that he is free of future concern, and while his position within Soviet society is gradually rehabilitated, he recognises that it will only be a matter of time before he inadvertently transgresses the invisible demarcation lines again.
The novel showcases Barnes's lovely prose, though I did find the staccato delivery of mini-chapters, seldom in chronological order, detracted from, rather than added to, the cohesion of the story. The vignettes of Prokofiev and Stravinsky were very entertaining, and the overall impact of the book was informative, but somehow, and unusually for Julian Barnes, especially given the potentially fascinating subject matter, the story never quite ignited.
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LibraryThing member lesleynicol
I was disappointed in this little book which was mercifully short. Julian Barnes' beautiful writing is there , but the story of the musician Shostakovich and his life in Stalinist Russia as he struggles to maintain his artistic integrity in the face of edicts from the leaders to compose the sort of
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music they require as propaganda for their regime. He did not come across as a very interesting character and nothing of his "person" or his relationships was revealed to me. Show Less
LibraryThing member Wickabod
What a delight this elegant little gem from Julian Barnes is.
It's not easy to breathe new life into a subject that's been written about so often. But in a compact package, this novel about composer Dmitri Shostakovich provides a fresh glimpse into life in the Soviet Union at the height of Stalin's
It's a story about art and creativity struggling to survive under impossible conditions, but it's also the story of a man literally trying just to survive.
What a terrific and lasting central image: Shostakovich dressed and with a suitcase out on the landing of his apartment every night, waiting to get picked up by the secret police, because he hopes that will keep the police from bothering his family inside (and he doesn't want to keep his wife up all night with his own terror-induced insomnia). But night after night, the police don't come. And so he waits, and ponders his fate. "This was one of the questions in his head: was it brave to be standing there waiting for them, or was it cowardly? Or was it neither -- merely sensible? He did not expect to discover the answer." Should he smoke, or save his cigarettes for after his arrest? But what if he saves the cigarettes, and they then get confiscated? Or what if he's quickly executed before he gets a chance to smoke them? And so it goes. . . .
Barnes has given us a thoughtful meditation on art and the life of the artist. In the end, are music and its historical context inextricably woven together? Can music ever escape the noise of time?
"What he hoped was that death would liberate his music: liberate it from his life. Time would pass, and though musicologists would continue their debates, his work would begin to stand for itself. History, as well as biography, would fade: perhaps one day Fascism and Communism would be merely words in textbooks. And then, if it still had value -- if there were still ears to hear -- his music would be . . . just music."
It's a graceful and understated book, full of compassion. But there is also dark humor at every turn:
"In the old days, a child might pay for the sins of its father, or indeed mother. Nowadays, in the most advanced society on earth, the parents might pay for the sins of the child, along with uncles, aunts, cousins, in-laws, colleagues, friends, and even the man who unthinkingly smiled at you as he came out of the lift at three in the morning. The system of retribution had been greatly improved, and was so much more inclusive than it used to be."
I've read a fair amount of Barnes's fiction over the years, but this is my new favorite among his books. I'm very fond of it.
So here I sit, listening to Shostakovich's string quartets as I type this review. It seems only fitting.
It's not easy to breathe new life into a subject that's been written about so often. But in a compact package, this novel about composer Dmitri Shostakovich provides a fresh glimpse into life in the Soviet Union at the height of Stalin's
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purges. With wit and humanity, Barnes has captured something essential about the terror, paranoia, and absurdities of that time: "a vast catalogue of little farces adding up to an immense tragedy."It's a story about art and creativity struggling to survive under impossible conditions, but it's also the story of a man literally trying just to survive.
What a terrific and lasting central image: Shostakovich dressed and with a suitcase out on the landing of his apartment every night, waiting to get picked up by the secret police, because he hopes that will keep the police from bothering his family inside (and he doesn't want to keep his wife up all night with his own terror-induced insomnia). But night after night, the police don't come. And so he waits, and ponders his fate. "This was one of the questions in his head: was it brave to be standing there waiting for them, or was it cowardly? Or was it neither -- merely sensible? He did not expect to discover the answer." Should he smoke, or save his cigarettes for after his arrest? But what if he saves the cigarettes, and they then get confiscated? Or what if he's quickly executed before he gets a chance to smoke them? And so it goes. . . .
Barnes has given us a thoughtful meditation on art and the life of the artist. In the end, are music and its historical context inextricably woven together? Can music ever escape the noise of time?
"What he hoped was that death would liberate his music: liberate it from his life. Time would pass, and though musicologists would continue their debates, his work would begin to stand for itself. History, as well as biography, would fade: perhaps one day Fascism and Communism would be merely words in textbooks. And then, if it still had value -- if there were still ears to hear -- his music would be . . . just music."
It's a graceful and understated book, full of compassion. But there is also dark humor at every turn:
"In the old days, a child might pay for the sins of its father, or indeed mother. Nowadays, in the most advanced society on earth, the parents might pay for the sins of the child, along with uncles, aunts, cousins, in-laws, colleagues, friends, and even the man who unthinkingly smiled at you as he came out of the lift at three in the morning. The system of retribution had been greatly improved, and was so much more inclusive than it used to be."
I've read a fair amount of Barnes's fiction over the years, but this is my new favorite among his books. I'm very fond of it.
So here I sit, listening to Shostakovich's string quartets as I type this review. It seems only fitting.
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LibraryThing member rmckeown
Dating back to graduate school, I have admired Julian Barnes for his quirky novels. In most of his works, he does not use anything resembling the conventional structure of the novel. However, as a Booker Prize winner, he has the sort of position which allows him to be as unconventional as he
This interesting historical account of the career of Dmitri Shostakovich has some flavor of historical fiction, but at the end of the novel, he has profusely thanked Elizabeth Wilson, who “supplied [him] with material I would never have come across, corrected many misapprehensions, and read the typescript” (201). He continues this adulation with, “this is my book not hers; and if you haven’t liked mine, then read hers” (201). Thanks for the offer Dmitri Dmitrievich, but I liked your book a lot.
I have been fascinated by Russian history for decades, and I also have a fondness for Russian music – particularly Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, and Shostakovich. When I learned of the relationship between Dmitri and Josef Stalin, I was perplexed. I always thought music was a bridge over any troubled waters on the planet. The composers refusal to join the Communist Party caused him much trouble. At one point in his life, he so feared the Russian secret police, he slept in his clothes with a small handbag on the floor. He did not want to be dragged away in his pajamas.
Eventually, Stalin died, and Nikita Khrushchev became the First Secretary of the Party. While Stalin abhorred Dmitri’s talent, and the official party line was that Dimitri’s music was “Muddle and Muck.” Most of his work was banned for years. When Nikita took over, he was rehabilitated after joining the party. He refused as best he could, but the pressure was intense. Many of his fellow composers and musicians turned their backs on him for giving it to Khrushchev
Barnes spent a lot of time on Dmitri’s introspection. In 1949 when the pressure under Stalin was at its greatest, Shostakovich mused, “If music is tragic, those with asses’ ears accuse it of being cynical. But when a composer is bitter, or in despair, or pessimistic, that still means he believes in something. // What could be put up against the noise of time? Only that music which is inside ourselves – the music of our being – which is transformed by some into real music. Which, over the decades, if it is strong and true and pure enough to drown out the noise of time, is transformed into the whisper of history” (135). Wow. This requires some serious thought to digest this – especially for a non musician.
Towards the end of his life, Shostakovich feared his memories. Barnes writes, “he could not stop hearing; and worst of all, he could not stop remembering. He so wished that the memory could be disengaged at will, like putting a car into neutral. That was what chauffeurs used to do, either at the top of a hill, or when they had reached maximum speed; they would coast to save petrol” (182-183).
What troubled me the most was the politicization of music. Music should join people together not drive them apart. Music should soothe, refresh, invigorate, and raise ones sensibilities. It should not be a political tool manipulated for the accumulation of power. Music has power of its own, and that should be the end. Julian Barnes’ 21st book, The Noise of Time is an absorbing and thought-provoking exploration of the clash between art and power. Whether you are a composer, a musician, or merely a listener like me, this novel should move you to a better place. 5 stars
--Jim, 10/26/16
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wishes. His latest novel, The Noise of Time, is certainly no exception. This interesting historical account of the career of Dmitri Shostakovich has some flavor of historical fiction, but at the end of the novel, he has profusely thanked Elizabeth Wilson, who “supplied [him] with material I would never have come across, corrected many misapprehensions, and read the typescript” (201). He continues this adulation with, “this is my book not hers; and if you haven’t liked mine, then read hers” (201). Thanks for the offer Dmitri Dmitrievich, but I liked your book a lot.
I have been fascinated by Russian history for decades, and I also have a fondness for Russian music – particularly Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, and Shostakovich. When I learned of the relationship between Dmitri and Josef Stalin, I was perplexed. I always thought music was a bridge over any troubled waters on the planet. The composers refusal to join the Communist Party caused him much trouble. At one point in his life, he so feared the Russian secret police, he slept in his clothes with a small handbag on the floor. He did not want to be dragged away in his pajamas.
Eventually, Stalin died, and Nikita Khrushchev became the First Secretary of the Party. While Stalin abhorred Dmitri’s talent, and the official party line was that Dimitri’s music was “Muddle and Muck.” Most of his work was banned for years. When Nikita took over, he was rehabilitated after joining the party. He refused as best he could, but the pressure was intense. Many of his fellow composers and musicians turned their backs on him for giving it to Khrushchev
Barnes spent a lot of time on Dmitri’s introspection. In 1949 when the pressure under Stalin was at its greatest, Shostakovich mused, “If music is tragic, those with asses’ ears accuse it of being cynical. But when a composer is bitter, or in despair, or pessimistic, that still means he believes in something. // What could be put up against the noise of time? Only that music which is inside ourselves – the music of our being – which is transformed by some into real music. Which, over the decades, if it is strong and true and pure enough to drown out the noise of time, is transformed into the whisper of history” (135). Wow. This requires some serious thought to digest this – especially for a non musician.
Towards the end of his life, Shostakovich feared his memories. Barnes writes, “he could not stop hearing; and worst of all, he could not stop remembering. He so wished that the memory could be disengaged at will, like putting a car into neutral. That was what chauffeurs used to do, either at the top of a hill, or when they had reached maximum speed; they would coast to save petrol” (182-183).
What troubled me the most was the politicization of music. Music should join people together not drive them apart. Music should soothe, refresh, invigorate, and raise ones sensibilities. It should not be a political tool manipulated for the accumulation of power. Music has power of its own, and that should be the end. Julian Barnes’ 21st book, The Noise of Time is an absorbing and thought-provoking exploration of the clash between art and power. Whether you are a composer, a musician, or merely a listener like me, this novel should move you to a better place. 5 stars
--Jim, 10/26/16
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LibraryThing member BooksForDinner
Enjoyed this very much, coming on the heels of having read "Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad" a couple months ago. Barnes tackles Shostakovich in an interesting way, tracing the downward trajectory of his spirit (understandable so!!). Fear and
Also, I got a very strong Kurt Vonnegut vibe throughout this book, not necessarily for any humor, but more for his repeating devices and language in a very Vonnegut-ian way.
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resignation are two other important themes in this novel.Also, I got a very strong Kurt Vonnegut vibe throughout this book, not necessarily for any humor, but more for his repeating devices and language in a very Vonnegut-ian way.
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LibraryThing member snash
The book is historical fiction about the Shostakovich, the Russian composer and deals with the compromises of art in Soviet Russia. More particularly it deals with courage and cowardliness, ideals and compromise all against the process of aging. Contains some great quotes.
LibraryThing member icolford
Doubtless, there are hundreds of thousands of classical music fans who are familiar with the work of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) but know his life only in broad strokes. Julian Barnes' novel The Noise of Time fills in the blanks as only fiction can do: slipping into the past,
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appropriating the composer's voice and entering his consciousness in order to tell us about his loves and ambitions and hopes and fears. Shostakovich was a true artist, a genius who lived for music. Success and early fame brought with it accolades and financial stability. But it also attracted the unwelcome scrutiny of a paranoid, ham-fisted, perfidious and omnipresent political apparatus that controlled every aspect of life in the Soviet Union. For all his adult years, Shostakovich created his compositions under the shadow of a regime that could (and, on several occasions, did) revoke his privileges, undermine his livelihood and threaten far worse, if his music failed to align with officially sanctioned Marxist-Leninist philosophy. The harassment and persecution that Shostakovich and indeed all Soviet creative artists endured was such that the release of a new work was not accompanied by a sense of accomplishment, but rather by a pervasive dread, until such time that the Party decided the work was (or was not) suitable for public consumption. Barnes opens the novel in 1936, the year of Shostakovich’s “first denunciation,” when it seemed to him so likely that he would be arrested that he spent his nights next to the lift outside his flat, fully dressed and with a packed suitcase, in order to be ready when the police came and so his family would not be traumatized by the sight of him being hauled away. The voice of Shostakovich that Julian Barnes conjures is a canny, gently ironic, perceptive and very human one, filled with self-doubt, that often expresses disgust with the artistic and moral compromises he’s forced to make in order to survive. The impression this masterful novel leaves us with is of a simple man with no understanding of politics so haunted and depleted by the implicit threats and incessant demands of a mercurial and enigmatic government that when death finally comes, it is a blessed release. Show Less
LibraryThing member michaelbartley
I am a fan of julian barnes! the story of a artist living in the old soviet union trying to be a artist and staying alive, how fate both good and bad interacts with our life
LibraryThing member Lunarreader
This one is strange. I enjoyed Barnes' latest novels [Alsof het voorbij is] and [Hoogteverschillen] a lot, they are true jewels, but this one is ... well, just strange. It is a biography of the adult life of the composer Sjostakovitsj, or is it not? Is it rather a description of dictatorship, more
The reader learns a lot about the composer, learns a lot more about the intrigues, the manipulation, the "new" truth under each new Sovjet leader, and so on. But is it a novel? It looks like a series of thoughts, questions, doubts. Not all of them are worked out, some return, some not, .... it is strange.
One thing is for sure, it is a totally different book then the latest novels. You sense Barnes' talent, the going along with the irony, the circular self-reflections of the composer (or are they from the author?), the returning items and the reappearing title phrase.
Barnes is top for me in his novels, i did not realise a true connection and i felt no emotion at all. So, 3 stars, for the beautiful writing, only 3 stars because of the non realisation of my involvement.
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precisely communist dictatorship, with Sjostakovitsj just being the "random" protagonist? The reader learns a lot about the composer, learns a lot more about the intrigues, the manipulation, the "new" truth under each new Sovjet leader, and so on. But is it a novel? It looks like a series of thoughts, questions, doubts. Not all of them are worked out, some return, some not, .... it is strange.
One thing is for sure, it is a totally different book then the latest novels. You sense Barnes' talent, the going along with the irony, the circular self-reflections of the composer (or are they from the author?), the returning items and the reappearing title phrase.
Barnes is top for me in his novels, i did not realise a true connection and i felt no emotion at all. So, 3 stars, for the beautiful writing, only 3 stars because of the non realisation of my involvement.
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LibraryThing member TheBookJunky
I love what Julian Barnes can do with the facts.
When the Russian composer Shostakovich was denounced in 1936, at the beginning of Stalin’s Great Terror period, he knew he was likely to be “purged”. Everyone dreaded the nocturnal sound of pounding on the door - it had only one meaning.
“The cacophony of sounds in his head. His father’s voice, the waltzes and polkas he had played while courting Nita, four blasts of a factory siren in F sharp, dogs outbarking an insecure bassoonist, a riot of percussion and brass beneath a steel-lined government box.
These noises were interrupted by one from the real world: the sudden whirr and growl of the lift’s machinery. Now it was his foot that skittered, knocking over the little case that rested against his calf.
He waited, suddenly empty of memory, filled only with fear. “
How did Shostakovich live through this, and survive until 1975, producing so many great works? ”Well, life is not a walk across a field, as the saying goes. A soul could be destroyed in one of three ways: by what others did to you; by what others made you do to yourself; and by what you voluntarily chose to do to yourself.”
He was constantly torn between an experimental style and a conservative melodious style that was pleasing to the ears of Stalin and the bureaucrats. The navigation was fraught with unseen pitfalls. He was denounced several times. At times he was forced to repudiate his own work, in addition to that of others such as Prokofiev and Stravinsky. “Being a hero was much easier than being a coward. To be a hero, you only had to be brave for a moment””
Wikipedia outlines the salient features, the skeleton, of Shostakovich’s life. Julian Barnes has added the flesh, the heart and the soul.“What could be put up against the noise of time? Only that music which is inside ourselves – the music of our being – which is transformed by some into real music. Which, over the decades, if it is strong and true and pure enough to drown out the noise of time, is transformed into the whisper of history.
This was what he held to.”
When the Russian composer Shostakovich was denounced in 1936, at the beginning of Stalin’s Great Terror period, he knew he was likely to be “purged”. Everyone dreaded the nocturnal sound of pounding on the door - it had only one meaning.
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“They always came for you in the middle of the night. And so, rather than be dragged from the apartment in his pyjamas, or forced to dress in front of some contemptuously impassive NKVD man, he would go to bed fully clothed, lying on top of the blankets” For a period of time, to spare his family, he waited every night outside his apartment, beside the lift, fully dressed and with a small suitcase of essentials. And while he waited: “The cacophony of sounds in his head. His father’s voice, the waltzes and polkas he had played while courting Nita, four blasts of a factory siren in F sharp, dogs outbarking an insecure bassoonist, a riot of percussion and brass beneath a steel-lined government box.
These noises were interrupted by one from the real world: the sudden whirr and growl of the lift’s machinery. Now it was his foot that skittered, knocking over the little case that rested against his calf.
He waited, suddenly empty of memory, filled only with fear. “
How did Shostakovich live through this, and survive until 1975, producing so many great works? ”Well, life is not a walk across a field, as the saying goes. A soul could be destroyed in one of three ways: by what others did to you; by what others made you do to yourself; and by what you voluntarily chose to do to yourself.”
He was constantly torn between an experimental style and a conservative melodious style that was pleasing to the ears of Stalin and the bureaucrats. The navigation was fraught with unseen pitfalls. He was denounced several times. At times he was forced to repudiate his own work, in addition to that of others such as Prokofiev and Stravinsky. “Being a hero was much easier than being a coward. To be a hero, you only had to be brave for a moment””
Wikipedia outlines the salient features, the skeleton, of Shostakovich’s life. Julian Barnes has added the flesh, the heart and the soul.“What could be put up against the noise of time? Only that music which is inside ourselves – the music of our being – which is transformed by some into real music. Which, over the decades, if it is strong and true and pure enough to drown out the noise of time, is transformed into the whisper of history.
This was what he held to.”
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LibraryThing member cuentosalgernon
This short novel is a deep, insightful and brilliant analysis of how the Communist Soviet regimen destroyed individuals and, in particular, how it prevented artists to create authentic art, with a main character, Dmitri Shostakovich, who fell from favor during Stalin’s rule, as a perfect example
The novel consists entirely of the interior monologue of Shostakovich in three important moments of his life. With an elegant prose, this monologue shows how he lived in utter terror under the Stalin’s rule and how, through compromise, irony and sometimes even betrayal, he learned to survive through the manipulative “softer” regime that came after Stalin’s death. A monologue that is sad and moving, but also full of irony, and absorbing at all times, which shows Shostakovich as a complex and brave person who did his best to fight repression and terror while trying at the same time to protect his family and friends, an impossible and exhausting task under the repression of the Communist dictatorship.
A quick, insightful and fascinating novel. A must read.
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of all this.The novel consists entirely of the interior monologue of Shostakovich in three important moments of his life. With an elegant prose, this monologue shows how he lived in utter terror under the Stalin’s rule and how, through compromise, irony and sometimes even betrayal, he learned to survive through the manipulative “softer” regime that came after Stalin’s death. A monologue that is sad and moving, but also full of irony, and absorbing at all times, which shows Shostakovich as a complex and brave person who did his best to fight repression and terror while trying at the same time to protect his family and friends, an impossible and exhausting task under the repression of the Communist dictatorship.
A quick, insightful and fascinating novel. A must read.
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LibraryThing member missizicks
This is a fiction based on facts. Events in the life of Julian Barnes's Shostakovich happened to the actual Shostakovich. Barnes imagines what Dmitri Dmitrievich's inner monologue in reaction to those events might have been. In doing so, Barnes provides an allegory for private life lived in
The book is a thoughtful and thought provoking one. It considers the matter of historical fact and whether we can ever trust it to be true. Shostakovich reads articles he hasn't written to discover what he is supposed to think. He knows it isn't true, but the articles become the historical record by which he is judged. He considers death, and realises that death would mean he is no longer able to tell his own story, even if only to himself. His story would be completely in the hands of the Soviet régime. As a historian, and as an archivist whose job it is to preserve and protect the historical record, I find ideas about what is fact and what is perception reported as fact interesting. It tips over into literature like this book and Hillary Mantel's Cromwell novels, where such a convincing fictional portrait of an actual person is constructed by the author that the novel comes to be treated as biography. Facts are often dull. I see facts contained within the archive I manage embroidered and embellished by our press team to make an interesting story. Those amplified facts then become received wisdom, distorting the actual history. It reminds me of when I was at school, studying the First World War. We were given an essay topic about the Christmas truce and one of my classmates described the video to Paul McCartney's Pipes of Peace.
The other thing I liked about this book is its dryness. Barnes writes wryly as Shostakovich, and I found that I had to slow my reading to properly absorb what he was getting at. It's not an entertaining romp through the life of Shostakovich, it's a story about principles, compromise and survival. Anyone who chooses to have a career rather than simply work for a living will recognise themselves, and the sacrifices and compromises they've had to make, as they climb their chosen ladder. I certainly did.
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relation to public authority. As well as a satire about the Soviet system under Stalin, with its arbitrary rules and changeable persecutions, the book is a reflection on how any of us subdue our true selves in the workplace or under whatever political system governs our country. We all make compromises to fit in with the system. Some of us, like Barnes's Shostakovich, use irony to take away the bitterness of not being true to ourselves, others convince themselves that they truly believe the nonsense we are made to labour under, and a few are naïve about the world they inhabit.The book is a thoughtful and thought provoking one. It considers the matter of historical fact and whether we can ever trust it to be true. Shostakovich reads articles he hasn't written to discover what he is supposed to think. He knows it isn't true, but the articles become the historical record by which he is judged. He considers death, and realises that death would mean he is no longer able to tell his own story, even if only to himself. His story would be completely in the hands of the Soviet régime. As a historian, and as an archivist whose job it is to preserve and protect the historical record, I find ideas about what is fact and what is perception reported as fact interesting. It tips over into literature like this book and Hillary Mantel's Cromwell novels, where such a convincing fictional portrait of an actual person is constructed by the author that the novel comes to be treated as biography. Facts are often dull. I see facts contained within the archive I manage embroidered and embellished by our press team to make an interesting story. Those amplified facts then become received wisdom, distorting the actual history. It reminds me of when I was at school, studying the First World War. We were given an essay topic about the Christmas truce and one of my classmates described the video to Paul McCartney's Pipes of Peace.
The other thing I liked about this book is its dryness. Barnes writes wryly as Shostakovich, and I found that I had to slow my reading to properly absorb what he was getting at. It's not an entertaining romp through the life of Shostakovich, it's a story about principles, compromise and survival. Anyone who chooses to have a career rather than simply work for a living will recognise themselves, and the sacrifices and compromises they've had to make, as they climb their chosen ladder. I certainly did.
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LibraryThing member Rascalstar
Brilliantly written by a brilliant author -- but I didn't care for the story. It's about the life of the Russian composer Shostakovich. I know nothing about this composer and maybe that's best. He comes alive on these pages in all his brooding inferiority feelings, despite seeming to be not only
I heartily encourage reading this author, as I intend to read more of his books, however I wouldn't begin with this one unless you know quite a bit about music or perhaps about Russia or the history of the country. I suspect people who have lived in Russia might enjoy the book. The writing, as always, is beyond fault.
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good at what he does but ahead of his time. The nuanced revelations of his character and his life and fears are exquisite. And he has reason to fear for his life, living under a brutal regime. I heartily encourage reading this author, as I intend to read more of his books, however I wouldn't begin with this one unless you know quite a bit about music or perhaps about Russia or the history of the country. I suspect people who have lived in Russia might enjoy the book. The writing, as always, is beyond fault.
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LibraryThing member tmph
Wholly uninterested in made-up bullshit. 'This book has been stolen from D. B. Shostakovich' sounds like a Book of the Month Club owner's book plate and the next page's "'You must be the man in the family now.' They had freighted him with an expectation and a sense of duty he was ill equipped to
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bear" sounding more like sappy middle America than Soviet Russia. Done with early on. Show Less
LibraryThing member tandah
I enjoyed every single page of this book - it is so well written, with deep insight about the impact of politics on the profoundly gifted compsoser. His journey from over-protected son, to the young embracer of free love, to the recognised composer, to the shunned then rehabilitated public figure.
Finally, Julian Barnes is just such an intelligient writer - in just a few sentences he can share a great deal of understanding - but perhaps the two standouts for me was Shostakoviches observation that in Shakespeare's tragedies, the villians always had some form of doubt - in Soviet Russia, there appeared no doubt. And then, the Power (the seat of Russian authority) squashed what it most feared - that is, the Power had fear (if not doubt).
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Underpinning it all is the humiliation he lives with in perceives to be his cowardice, rather than self-survival - and the juxtoposition of his acceptance of what he needs to do to survive against his desire for death. Sad but illuminating 'those that understood the complexities of life under tyranny'. Also enjoyed gaining another perspective on the impact of stalinist communism on artists as well as the disdain Shostakovich felt for the sympathetic westerners who applauded the principles of communisim whilst living in freedom.Finally, Julian Barnes is just such an intelligient writer - in just a few sentences he can share a great deal of understanding - but perhaps the two standouts for me was Shostakoviches observation that in Shakespeare's tragedies, the villians always had some form of doubt - in Soviet Russia, there appeared no doubt. And then, the Power (the seat of Russian authority) squashed what it most feared - that is, the Power had fear (if not doubt).
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LibraryThing member LDVoorberg
A history I knew nothing about, but told in a way that was interesting and provoking. The composer Shostakovich reflects on his life and the ups and downs he had as the political climate of Russia changed with government's whims. Not a long book, not scintillating, but interesting nonetheless.
Awards
Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2018)
Independent Booksellers' Book Prize (Shortlist — Adult — 2017)
The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction (Longlist — 2017)
San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year (Fiction — 2016)
Christian Science Monitor Best Book (Fiction — 2016)
The Observer Book of the Year (Fiction — 2016)