The Noise of Time

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 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 show more 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. show less

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 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, show more 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. show less

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 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; show more 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 show less

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 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, show more 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. show less

“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.” – Julian Barnes, The Noise of Time

In this fictional presentation of episodes from the life of Dmitri Shostakovich, Barnes explores how tyranny reduces artistic creativity in a society. The story is told in three vignettes: one set in 1936 at Shostakovich’s apartment during Stalin’s reign of terror, one in 1949 during his trip to the US to represent the Soviet Union at the Cultural and Scientific Congress for World Peace, and a third years later during Khrushchev’s tenure. It shows the composer being subjected to official disapproval of his opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk, and his show more corresponding fear of being arrested and killed at Stalin’s whim.

As one of the most noted Soviet composers of the time, Shostakovich endured immense political pressure by the state, and this book provides sympathetic portrait of how those pressures impacted his creative output. It challenges Lenin’s declaration that “art belongs to the people.” It is hard enough to create music without having to worry how it will be perceived by the state, and what might happen if it doesn’t please the despot in charge.

Barnes’ prose elicits a sense of Shostakovich’s inner turmoil. He wants to act courageously but feels like a coward. He wants to maintain his integrity but worries about his and his family’s safety. These complexities are teased out as the story unfolds. I was impressed by Barnes’ ability to relate numerous personal insights into Shostakovich’s character in a succinct way (just over 200 pages). One can only wonder what musical works Shostakovich may have produced in a more open and accepting environment.

This is the second of Barnes’ novels I have read this year. I also enjoyed The Sense of An Ending (My Review). I will definitely be reading more of his works in the future. show less

“One to hear, one to remember, and one to drink” lays out the structure of the novel, inspired by the creative life of Dmitri Shostakovich under a randomly repressive regime. The refrain ‘he lies like an eyewitness’ is threaded throughout the novel, illustrating the failure of memory. How an artist survives and how he dies a hundred deaths is examined by imagining the composer’s inner monologue at three main events in his life. Art may be immortal but artists are not — they bleed like the rest, and that blood can be spilt by friends & family. POV restricted to this character and the brief dialogs serve as catechisms and summaries. Barnes does a good job of depicting neither a victim nor a supplicant and doesn’t try to show more write a biography or a commentary on the nature of music: Shostakovich is a tool used to ponder the role of the artist in a political arena and the residue of politics on our personal choices.

Shostakovich is a perfect choice: less is known about him than many other composers and music is harder to pin down than literature. Barnes incorporates information not just for filler but to show how the composer tried to walk a thin, ever changing line: the postcard of Titian’s ‘The Tribute Money’ kept by his bedside re rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s as a survival tool. There are elements of both The Porcupine (what is our responsibility under authoritarianism, when should the individual be preferenced over the society) and Arthur & George (nature of fame, personal honour). Content 3 stars, gave it 4 stars because of the approach and structure; not many other writers could pull this off as elegantly. The book is fairly short, enjoyable to immediately re-read to really appreciate some of the structuring. show less

Dopo un inizio faticoso, Barnes mi ha totalmente catturata. Il rumore del tempo è un romanzo storico e come tale l'ho letto, con il gruppo di lettura dell'ornitorinco. Ci viene raccontata la vita di Shostakovich, un musicista che ha lottato con il regime totalitario di Stalin per quasi tutta la vita.
Letot in un momento storico adatto, tante cose sono diverse eppure uguali.
Struggente, ironico, irritante: un uomo che per paura e per inseguire il suo essere artista passa sopra a tanto. E' in balia del suo tempo (e del rumore del tempo), a volte schiacciato, a volte usato come strumento di propaganda. Mi ha molto colpito il suo viaggio negli USA e il suo dialogo con Nabokov, uno che può permettersi di parlare e di attaccare in un certo show more modo perché con Stalin non ci deve più convivere.
Una lettura piena di spunti interessanti su tanti aspetti, a partire dal rapporto tra arte e potere e tra artista e potere. Consigliatissimo. show less