Click Here to Read: “The First Impulse Was to Write about Music,” a review of the novel Illuminations by Eva Hoffman, reviewed by Michael J. Riesz, in The Independent Book Section on Friday, June 17th, 2008.
From the Music Editor, Julie Jafee Nagel: Career choice begins in early childhood for the musician, who, unlike other highly trained professionals (e.g., doctors, lawyers) can decide on an occupation at an older age. This fact has profound implications for mental and social development as the people who wind up at music schools and conservatories start lessons typically in childhood, spend numerous hours alone practicing, and are influenced profoundly during their growing years by parent and teacher attitudes and relationships. One’s ego develops alongside with one’s talent and object relationships. By adolescence and young adult years, there is a tremendous ego investment in oneself as a musician, not to mention the dollars spent on lessons and instruments. Further, the early age at which a young person finds he or she can not only find pleasure in competence at an instrument but also speak nonverbally through a musical instrument has profound implications for psycho-social development. The success or derailment of an eventual career for one with talent and for one for whom music has become an integral part of the self has profound intrapsychic, interpersonal, and social implications .
Two recent books probe the transformative power of music but equally important the psychic impact of the road not taken when two talented musicians are derailed, one due to mental illness and the other due to relocation from Europe to Canada due to anti-semitism.
In “The Soloist” by Steve Lopez, (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2008) a newspaper reporter (Steve Lopez – LA Times) chronicles his experiences with Nathaniel Ayers, an African-American double bass player whom Lopez discovered on Skid Row in Los Angeles. Once a promising musician at The Juilliard School, Ayres became unable to function due to a mental breakdown. In trying to save Ayres as a musician and as a man, Lopez found his life transformed.
In her 2008 novel, “Illuminations “ (Harvill Secker), author Eve Hoffman thinly disguised through the character Isabel, calls upon her own musical training as a budding concert pianist before her family fled Cracow, Poland for Canada. Living Canada, Hoffman felt that pursuit of her music career was impractical for an immigrant. Drifting away from music and into literature as a career, she attempted to understand her inner and outer worlds through her writing. “Illuminations” is a novel about clashing values and the underlying messages about dislocation and interpersonal encounters, all viewed in the book through a musician’s eye and musical metaphor.
Eva Hoffman is also the author of the memoir ‘Lost in Translation” (1989), “Exit into History” (1993) Shtetl(1997), “The Secret” (2001) and “After such Knowledge “(2004).
Nagel, J.J. (2008) Psychoanalytic and Musical Perspectives on Shame in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Vol. 56, No. 2, pp. 551-563.
Nagel, J.J. (2008) Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Music: An Intersection on the Oral and Aural Road. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Vol. 77, No. 2, pp. 507-530.