Singing into the Piano [Paperback]

Ted Mooney (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 22, 1999

a political fund-raiser in New York becomes the setting for a brazen act of sexual display by young lovers. Watching them is Santiago Diaz, the benefit's speaker, who is running for the presidency of his native Mexico. Aroused and disturbed, he later befriends the couple and draws them into his entourage, his marriage, and into the vortex of trans-American politics. There Andrew and Edith discover a world where plunder dictates policy, friendship is a devalued currency, and the future of nations is determined by talk shows and acts of terror.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

True love and international affairs make strange bedfellows indeed. Ted Mooney's novel Singing into the Piano begins with two lovers, Edith and Andrew, engaging in some very heavy petting under the table while attending a political banquet in New York. The speaker is Santiago Diaz, a former soccer star and candidate for president of Mexico, and since Edith and Andrew's table is located directly in front of him, he can't help but notice what is going on. Later, when he finds the purse Edith left behind and returns it to her, Diaz draws the American couple into his own world of Mexican politics, economics, and danger. Invited to visit Diaz and his wife at their home in Mexico, Andrew and Edith find themselves first seduced by the glamour of a political campaign and then increasingly endangered by a skein of conspiracy, violence, and death. Not only has Mooney come up with an intriguing and fast-moving story, he has also penned a provocative meditation on the state of an increasingly interrelated world at the end of the 20th century. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

In the brilliant opening scene of this thought-provoking novel from Art in America editor Mooney (Easy Travel to Other Planets), political attorney Andrew and his exhibitionist girlfriend Edith distract Mexican presidential candidate Santiago Diaz by their erotic play at a fund-raiser. Santiago and his wife, Mercedes, identify with the lovers, and Andrew and Edith find themselves the candidate's house guests during an explosive rift within his campaign over the plight of factory workers. Edith's exhibitionism and Andrew's amorous complicity keep them at the edge of trouble. Meanwhile, in the rain forest, one of Andrew's clients, a primatologist, is in danger from loggers with connections to Mexican political bosses?and to Andrew and Edith's friend James, an art dealer who has been laundering illicit logging money. James is in Mexico too, at the bidding of Marisa, a photographer and logging heiress who has persuaded Santiago, Mercedes, Andrew and Edith to pose together in another of the novel's many variations on the theme of our deep, animal need to expose ourselves. Mooney brings a deft, if sometimes too cerebral, touch to his task, juxtaposing human display (art-gallery patrons and power seekers) with the animal kind (a monkey run amok in the apartment of a primatologist's dead patroness, fighting cocks, yawping beasts in a public market). It adds up to an intelligent, amusing performance.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (February 22, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679743065
• ISBN-13: 978-0679743064
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,719,930 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ted Mooney was born in Dallas, Texas; grew up in Washington, D.C.; and in 1973 moved to New York, where he has resided since. Throughout his adult life he has pursued two parallel careers--in the literary and art worlds. His first novel, "Easy Travel to Other Planets" (1981), which won the Sue Kauffman Award for First Fiction from the the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was also a Finalist for the National Book Awards, was written between the hours of 4:00 and 8:30 AM daily before he reported, at 9 AM, to his full-time job as Senior Editor at "Art in America" magazine, a position he held from 1977-2008. He continued this dual arrangement throughout the writing of his next three novels: "Traffic and Laughter" (1990), "Singing into the Piano (1998), and "The Same River Twice" (2010). Also during this period he was a frequent contributor to such publications as "Esquire," "Granta," "The Los Angeles Times," "Vogue," "Art in America," "Artforum," and others. Currently he teaches a graduate seminar at Yale University School of Art, while working on his next novel, titled "Shadow and Silhouette." When time permits, he travels enthusiastically and widely, usually in research for his fiction writing.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sumptuous, erotic story. Anglo, Latin & Intelligent, December 16, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Singing into the Piano (Hardcover)

While I usually don't buy the books I read, Ted Mooney's - Singing into the Piano makes me feel obligated to directly support the author's work. Give me more Ted! This erotic tale is both dark and luminous. It captures the essence of desperate, unshakable romance and explores the theme of borders <<social acceptability>>. The story begins in a New York ballroom where Santiago Diaz, candidate for the Mexican Presidency is scheduled to speak. At a table near the front a pair of educated and aroused gringo yuppies engage in digital love-making - a great distraction to the speaker. The narrator follows this pair who descend into a bachanal of public display, their mutually destructive and soul-binding fetish. Slowly their lives become intertwined with those of the presidential candidate and his fair wife. These are normal people with an unusual and, to me, evocative preoccupation with public sex. As a student of the Spanish language I could not help but be impressed by the seamless way in which Mr. Mooney interweaves these two languages. The author's frequent use of Spanish terminology serves to enrich and enliven the already vibrant text. (Some ideas are better expressed in a foreign language where the breadth of their meaning and depth of nuance is greater.) Never does he descend to the level of definition. To me his usages of Spanish words was intelligent and should be contextually understandable to even non-Spanish speaking readers. Mooney's style deserves emulation. Bravo! Ted Mooney drew me in. The story; its crisp pace and elegant imagery held my attention. But I found the conclusion somewhat less coherent and gripping than the novel in general. The characterization, from the outset excellent, seemed to diminish in quality toward the end. The plot takes a bizarre turn to Mexico (where Mooney's knowlege and references made me long to return) and towards the end of the novel... peters out. In the book's conclusion I believe Mooney's exploration of the 'borders' theme, the physical , the perceived, the imagined is a bit overt. But if I had to recommend one book to my friends, 20-something, educated, adventuresome all, I wouldn't hesitate to write 'Singing into the Piano' at the top of my list.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A psychologocal-political-sexual thriller., April 24, 1998

By 

Constant Listener (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Singing into the Piano (Hardcover)

This book is best read as a thriller that links sexual psychology and politics with a contemplation of the ethics of friendship and capitalism. But it's not as dry as all that---in fact, it's pretty hot stuff in places. Though the dialogue can be more than somewhat contrived (the author has a bad habit of speaking his prose style through his characters mouths in an implausible way), the complexity of the plot and its implications, plus the unusual and charged relationships among four (!) protagonists, make it well worthwhile.

6 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Weak, pretentious, juvenile, April 9, 1998

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Singing into the Piano (Hardcover)

One of the worst books I have encountered in the past year. There are a host of technical problems, especially with regard to point of view, which is rarely clear. The characters are utterly unbelievable. (Confronted by a violent animal rights activist, Mercedes hands him her fur jacket, suddenly agreeing with him that "It is stupid!") Most unforgivable is the use of the f-word in the authorial voice, as in "They resumed f***ing." This book was silly and ultimately boring.