60 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A dead and lifeless "life", May 23, 2002
This review is from: Shostakovich: A Life (Hardcover)
I have two fundamental problems with Fay's book, both of which really prevent me for giving it a solid endorsement, much less considering it a benchmark in biography.
First, Fay has taken the position that all of her sources must be written (and generally published). This not necessarily a safe thing to do in a society with a free and open press, and becomes very problematic for a prominent Soviet citizen. Were articles published in Soviet books, journals, and newspapers true and accurate? Were they free of political influence? Can anyone verify the authorship of any of these? Even with the extensive endnotes offering references with publication sources and dates, it's hard to consider her work to be any more valid than, say, Solomon Volkov's "Testimony", which Fay hates so much that she cannot be objective about it.
I draw here on the statistical definitions for reliability and validity, in which "reliable" merely means that a result can be reproduced reliably, while "valid" implies that a result accurately represents what it claims to represent. This seems to be a useful distinction, and I will hedge, and grant Fay's book reliability, but not validity.
What she leaves out is equally troubling. There are many people still alive who knew Shostakovich. How many of them did Fay talk to? How many of them did she quote? Virtually none. Are such sources really any less valid than, say, an article in Pravda? In each case, one should note the source. If there are contradictory statements, one should note the contradictions. If sources may be less than credible, one should say why. Fay's biography is noticeably lacking in contradictions, which is remarkable in a biography of a man who himself seems to have been full of contradictions, and who lived in a society that was full of contradictions.
I wouldn't have such a problem with all of this if Fay had taken the position that "these are what the published sources say" rather than "this is Shostakovich". As long as a reader understands the difference, then yes, Fay's biography is an invaluable source. I do wish that Fay had drawn this distinction.
Finally, along these same lines, I have to question Fay's position of objectivity. Selection and omission of sources are always a source of bias. And there are times, particularly in relation to the Jewish issues of 1948 (the existence of the "doctor's plot" and the question about how much Shostakovich really knew about the risks of using Jewish subject matter in writing his music), where Fay takes a strong stand that is not supported in her sources, and which does not hold up in light of Shostakovich's previous use of Jewish themes or his previous connections to the Russian Jewish community. While Fay paints an unflattering picture of Shostakovich, the person she really defames is herself.
My second concern, much of which flows out of the first, is that this is a bloodless biography. I finished the book with a sense of the history, or at least one version of it, but in no way did I ever feel in Fay's book any presence of Shostakovich himself. There are glimpses, such as the quote by Shostakovich about party criticism of the eighth symphony (which he looked forward to as "one step forward, rather than one step back"), but the irony of this statement came across more because I knew of Shostakovich from other sources (writing, and of course the music), rather than from Fay herself. If I knew nothing of Shostakovich, would I have noticed this? It's hard to get a feeling whether Fay even likes or respects Shostakovich, either as a man or as a composer. There is no life in "Shostakovich: A Life". There is no music in "Shostakovich: A Life". Without these things, what is the point?
Good biography does not have to be this way. As an example of what *can* be accomplished, I highly recommend "Patton: A Genius for War" by Carlo d'Este. D'Este accomplishes what Fay fails to do, which is to capture the full humanity of a brilliant, complex, difficult, enigmatic, and controversial public figure. If there is a standard for judging biographies, it starts with this book; one comes away knowing what formed and motivated Patton, and more importantly, one learns to see both the private and the public man in everything he did and said. D'Este combines Fay's level of documentation with Elizabeth Wilson's level of personal insight in "Shostakovich: A Life Remembered", and it is a remarkable achievement. For anyone looking for a single volume on the life of Shostakovich, Elizabeth Wilson's book is the one to get.
In fairness, I don't think we'll ever see such a biography of Shostakovich, because the documentary record is much, much weaker, and because Shostakovich was so closed about himself. But I do wish that Fay had at least tried to capture "A Life". As it stands, Fay is only one of several "required readings", and I wouldn't put her at the top of the list unless one has need of her endnotes.
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27 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
a new "standard reference," but not the definitive work, October 18, 2002
This review is from: Shostakovich: A Life (Hardcover)
Having recently discovered Shostakovich, I quickly ran into the controversy regarding the official versus private accounts. Fay includes the official denunciations by the Stalinist regime, most infamously in 1936 and 1948, and so clearly moves beyond the "loyal son of the Communist Party" propaganda line, but rejects as unreliable much of the recent testimony of those who knew Shostakovich, including the memoirs called "Testimony." Personally, I am convinced by the mass of testimony that Shostakovich was indeed a passionate dissident, and that his music expressed that "to those with ears to hear," in the words he often used.
Take this volume for what it's worth. For now it is the standard biography, and has no competition in that regard. It tells the whole story, but leaves us feeling that we are missing the true inner story. For that story, other sources are clearly invaluable -- the book of reminiscences compiled by Elizabeth Wilson ("Shostakovich: A Life Remembered"), Solomon Volkov's "Testimony," and "Shostakovich Reconsidered," which contains much valuable commentary beyond simply defending Volkov's book.
I am listening to Rostropovich conducting Shostakovich's Fifth as I write, and nothing seems more absurd than the notion that the composer was a party apparatchik. Shostakovich's music expresses deep sorrow and suffering, and his defiant humanism. The music speaks for itself, but I am confident that Fay's biography will be surpassed by accounts that more fully convey the spiritual significance of Shostakovich's life and music.
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13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Fay's Shostakovich: Back to the Soviet Times, July 14, 2009
[...]
First of all, the language is dry and unimaginative. Second, the work lacks any considerable citations. In most of the cases, making statements, Fay doesn't care to cite the source. Consequently, there is very little we can discover about Shostakovich's personality in this book. Third, Fay ignores some considerable and valuable sources, like Shostakovich's letters to Glickman, as well as she questions the statements of Elizabeth Wilson's (Life Remembered) book.
My first feeling, when I read this so-called biography was, that it was a merely English abrupted translation of the Shostakovich's Soviet biography by Sofia Khentova.
Fay doesn't trust any letters or memories. On the contrary, she widely uses the publications of the Soviet officialese, including Shostakovich's articles and speeches, most of which were even not written by the composer himself!
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