I was always going to love this book. I was in love with Beethoven when I was a teenager: I was completely obsessed. I listened to his music over and over again, I played as many of his piano works as I could manage, and I read everything about him that I could get my hands on. (I have not entirely grown out of this obsession, as The Spouse can attest as I repeatedly work my way through my collection of Beethoven recordings.)
So Mr Beethoven, a novel in which he lives a little longer and writes another magnificent late work, kept me utterly absorbed.
Shortlisted for the 2020 Goldsmith’s Prize and the 2021 Republic of Consciousness Prize, and longlisted for the 2021 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Mr Beethoven is playful fiction, which subverts the genre. Its central—preposterous—premise is that Beethoven did not die in 1827, but lived long enough to travel to Boston in 1833 to produce a Biblical oratorio commissioned by the (amateur) Handel and Haydn Society. This graphic via a review by Paul Fulcher at Goodreads reproduces a newspaper clipping that confirms the existence of the commission.
Beethoven’s hearing loss was severe by then, (and he was suffering from excruciating tinnitus too though this is not mentioned in the novel) but his task in the novel is eased by the presence of a young woman called Thankful, fluent in the sign language used extensively in Martha’s Vineyard. (This was apparently because there was a high incidence of congenital deafness in Martha’a Vineyard at that time, because of intermarriage amongst people with a recessive genetic mutation. Like other aspects of this playful story, this is derived from historical fact.) In no time Beethoven masters this sign language and communication is established. (Well, it is fiction.) This enables him to tell the indignant librettist Ballou that his work is unusable, to fob off enquiries about how he’s getting on, and to indulge in mild intrigues with Thankful who doesn’t always translate exactly what is said to her. ‘It’s more of the same’, she says, presumably keeping a straight face as she does so.
There are constant playful reminders that this is not your usual historical novel. There are, for example, three different versions of one scene, which went like this, or perhaps like that, or no, it might have been this way—all of which of course could not actually have been any of the three because Beethoven died in 1827. Some way into the novel the narrator—like the members of the society—is fed up with the apparent lack of progress and explodes into indignation. Representing the frustrations of the reader, he lashes the author for an entire chapter:
We are not here now to dispute the virtues of fiction. Let’s take that matter as read, shall we? What we do dispute, however, is your right to hold back information.
You fill this book with information. As if to taunt us, you tell us all kinds of things we do not need to know, such as the names and ages and trades of other passengers (the shipboard septet — oh, please) on the vessel that could have conveyed the great composer to Boston. Remember that one? And we know where you find all these annoyingly irrelevant details. You even admit as much: on the Internet. So what?
We have come this far largely in silence. We have played the game. We have done our part. But we cannot go on keeping quiet when you continue to withhold what we most want to know, which is not the facts of the matter but the fiction. Is Beethoven really stalling? If so, why? Or has he in fact (as it were) almost finished the score? Or has he hit a block? Most of all, what is the supposed subject of this oratorio. You must know. We have been patient long enough. Over to you. Get on with it. (p.127-8)
Another splendid aspect of this novel is that Griffith—who likes to play in the Oulipian sandpit—confines Beethoven’s dialogues (which, remember, are always in response to conversations he can’t hear), to authentic sources, from translations of his letters. (Those so minded can inspect these sources in the appendix.)
Mr Beethoven is seriously good fun, but what I liked best was the very tempting idea that Beethoven was still innovating with a new style. It would have been so wonderful if he had lived longer!
David at David’s book World enjoyed it too.
Image credit: Newspaper clipping from From Psalm to Symphony: A History of Music in New England By Nicholas E. Tawa, via Paul Fulcher’s review at Goodreads
Author: Paul Griffiths
Title: Mr Beethoven
Publisher: Henningham Family Press, 2020
ISBN: 9781999797492, pbk., 302 pages
Source: Bayside Library
Scarlet Lies by Lani Wendt Young (Maori)
The inspiration for this remarkable book by Melbourne ophthalmologist Joe Reich AM was, he tells us in the Acknowledgements, his previous book, the biography of Zwi Lewin (My Sack of Memories, see 
The Australian Foreign Affairs journal only publishes three issues each year so there’s no excuse for neglecting it, but as usual, I am really behind with my reading of the journals I subscribe to. But—six months after its publication—this issue is still very relevant because it raises the viability of our current foreign policy strategy, i.e. to counter the rise of China with new strategic partnerships instead of relying on the US. If Australia’s foreign aid cuts in our region have taught our neighbourhood to look to their own interests and dispense with their loyalties accordingly, where does that leave us?
The curious title of this short prose work remains obscure until about halfway, when—as throughout the book—empty space is used to emphasise with devastating impact, the concept of the void. On page 38, there is this:
Every time I read one of these Little Books on Big Ideas (now rebadged as the On Series, by Hachette who seem to have taken over the series from Melbourne University Press), I want to read the whole lot. There’s currently 35 of them 
Shortlisted for the 
Travel […] opens doors, challenges stereotypes. builds bridges and expands the mind. As travel writer and guide Rick Steves put it ‘It moves around your furniture.’ It also taps into something more fundamental in our lives, as author Bruce Chatwin — who rejected the label of being a ‘travel writer’ — said, ‘The act of journeying contributes towards a sense of physical and mental wellbeing, while the monotony of prolonged settlement or regular work weaves patterns in the brain that engender fatigue and a sense of personal inadequacy.’ (More Than Half Way to Somewhere, p.174)
Robert Isaacs is a Noongar Elder and a member of the Stolen Generations, and asked how he was able to tell his story, he answered that he could do it because it was his lived experience. He was actually there in the Clontarf Boys Town and really saw what went on, just as he later on as a senior bureaucrat in Aboriginal Housing, he witnessed what was actually happening. He used his education to rise to the top of organisations that had never had Indigenous input into their decision-making. I reported on yesterday’s session with this most interesting author 
Karen Wyld’s multi-generational novel Where the Fruit Falls (on my TBR) is set across multiple time periods that enable her to weave in the different programs that impacted on Indigenous people. This involved a great deal of research and subsequently a lot of editing — she cut out 40,000 words! She wants people to think more about the land, such as being aware of the inland sea, now gone, but which is part of a story from one of her characters. Karen Wyld is of Martu descent (people of the Pilbara region in Western Australia)
Goorie-Koori Poet Evelyn Araluen talked about her book Drop Bear. (I’ve read some of her writing in 
Adam Thompson, whose short story collection Born into This is on my TBR, is the first book I’ve come across that is by an Aboriginal (pakana) writer from Tasmania. Like Evelyn, he was wary of the label ’emerging young writer’ because it’s so important that Indigenous authors are supported to tell their stories at whatever age they feel ready to write them. He’s not afraid to tackle difficult topics: one of his stories is about the divisive identity politics that are a feature of Indigenous Australian life in Tasmania.
It was Day two of the Margaret River Readers and Writers Festival today, and I’ve ‘zoomed’ it to listen to all day, while doing other things. The highlights of the day for me were revisiting Pip Williams talking about her novel 
One of the interesting aspects of the way readers have responded to the pandemic is that some were so discombobulated that they said they couldn’t read at all; some resorted to ‘comfort reading’; some devoured books about plagues such as Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks and The Plague by Albert Camus; and others like me went out of their way to escape into other times and places where pandemics had no place. So I am not quite sure what motivated me to buy a recent release from poet, novelist, academic and artist Véronique Tadjo from Côte d’Ivoire…
The book under discussion was Ambelin Kwaymullina’s Living on Stolen Land. This is a call to and a guide to action for anyone interested in decolonising Australia. This is the blurb:
To be honest, as I always try to be here, I don’t know what the fuss is about this novel. Carofiglio is apparently a best-selling author in Italy.
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