Customer Reviews

The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music

5 star:		(96)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Let me say up front that I normally avoid books like the Soloist. When I picked it up, however, and started glancing through it I became hooked and couldn't really put it down. Is it a page turner? Not really. For me I became entangled with Steve Lopez, the author, and Nathaniel Ayers the focus of the book and simply had to see how the book ended.

Steve Lopez, a reporter for the LA Times, accidently hears violin music coming, apparently from nowhere. When he investigates he finds Nathaniel, an obviously down and out and homeless individual playing what is essentially a broken instrument. Intrigued, Steve Lopez becomes wrapped up in a mission to lift Nathaniel out of his obvious difficulties. Steve learns that Nathaniel was a former Juilliard student and a gifted musician. He was also suffering from mental illness (schizophrenia) leaving him basically disfunctional.

Throughout The Soloist the reader rides heavy seas with highs full of hope and then lows filled with disappointment and dispare. Through Nathaniel's story we see the value of the human spirit. Through the actions of Steve Lopez we see that a simple act of kindness and humanity is never wasted, regardless of our motives.

Steve Lopez is a wonderful writer and his story is worth your time to read.

In a neglected corner of L.A.'s Pershing Park stands a statue of Beethoven, hat and cane clasped behind his back. The minute Nathaniel Anthony Ayers laid eyes on it, he knew he'd landed in the right city. Los Angeles. The City of Beethoven.

Ayers, in his mid-50s, is a Julliard-trained bass player whose future as a musician crashed and burned when he suffered a psychotic breakdown midway through his studies in the early 1970s. The crack-up was probably prompted by the intensely competitive Julliard atmosphere, but also by the stressful fact that Ayers was a black student on a nearly all-white campus. His professors thought him brilliant. But with the onset of mental illness (later diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia), Ayers dropped out of sight. Years later, he wound up in Los Angeles, discovered the statue of Beethoven (his musical hero), and settled down to a life in the streets where he serenaded passing traffic on a battered, two-stringed violin. Music was the abiding passion that kept him grounded. Music was the catalyst that brought beauty and peace to his frequently confused and always fragile world.

One day Steve Lopez, columnist for the "L.A. Times" and an engaging, insightful author, heard Ayers playing. Sensing a column topic, he struck up an acquaintance. The acquaintance unexpectedly blossomed into a friendship, and The Soloist is the story of that friendship. Lopez's sensitive memoir spotlights the disorientation of schizophrenia, the perils of living on the streets, and the difficulty in achieving recovery. But in telling Ayers' story, Lopez also reminds us that the mentally ill and the homeless possess dignity, a fierce need for autonomy, and a hunger for meaning and beauty in their lives. In the process, Lopez also has some telling things to say about the scandalous fact that most major U.S. cities contain Skid Rows in which the most vulnerable of our citizens are segregated; some much-needed observations, given our pharmaceutical-crazy, quick-cure ethos, about patience, respect, and compassion when it comes to therapy (his mentor in this regard is Dr. Mark Ragins, a genuine pioneer in recovery therapy); and some extraordinarily important things to say about the redemptive power of music.

Lopez's memoir of his friendship with Ayers never falls into a feel-good sentimentality. Ayers may heal to a certain extent, but it's unlikely that he'll ever recover and he certainly has his bad, disoriented, full-of-rage days. As Lopez learned, progress in treating mental illness is never linear. But Ayers now lives in an apartment instead of on the street; he's happily making music on a variety of instruments in his own studio; and he knows that he's loved. Lopez, in turn, confesses that he frequently felt burdened, helpless, frustrated, and on one occasion when Ayers melted down, betrayed. But he also discovered that his friendship with Ayers enriched him: "I know that through [Ayers'] courage and humility and faith in the power of art--through his very ability to find happiness and purpose--he has awakened something in me...it's not a stretch to say that this man I hoped to save has done as much for me as I have for him" (p. 268).

A magnificent story about two really quite extraordinary men. Highly, unreservedly, recommended.

My name is Joseph Russo -- I am one of Nathaniel's Juilliard friends mentioned in this book. I believe this book should be a "must read" for anyone who would like to more fully understand (and be affected by) the power of music and the importance of friendship....as well as the meaning of happiness and joy. It is a wonderful and ongoing story...Steve Lopez is an excellent writer befriending my dear friend Nathaniel who is a kind and wonderful person and extremely talented musician. You may want to read this book before you see the movie -- due out later this year.

This is an odyssey of how one man tried to recover the psychologically unrecoverable: The idyllic world of lower class black Cleveland for Nathaniel Ayers was forever shattered when his parents divorced. His descent into a mental world of confusion followed by music, followed by schizophrenia, was in truth just an unguided lifetime search for his lost father, and thus ultimately a defensive quest to return to the serenity of his shattered childhood.

This beautifully penned book by Steve Lopez, Ayers friend and one of his many male mentors, proves that Humpty-Dumpty could not be put back together again. That is to say, that his shattered family circle could not be squared -- at least not within the parameters of the known range of human psychology.

In a desperate life-long search for his father, who after the divorce moved to Las Vegas to become a garbage truck driver, Mr. Ayers bounced from one surrogate father to another until he managed to stumble upon his life calling: classical music. Through a desire to please, an intense commitment and discipline to music, Ayers became not just an average musician, but one hailed as a talented emerging world-class child prodigy. These attributes catapulted him into Julliard on a music scholarship in the same class and orchestra as the famous cellist Yo yo Ma. However, the pressures of the family breakup, Ayers own fragile mental makeup, and the steep competition at Juilliard took its toll and eventually proved too much for the tenuously held together psychological threads of Nathaniel Ayers. He had a complete mental breakdown, was carted off to Bellevue, forever cutting short prospects for a successful music career.

Diagnosed as a full-fledged schizophrenic, Ayers was now broke but on his own, headed westward ever more desperately in search of his father, who like his mother, had by now remarried into families with stepchildren. Since, Nathaniel did not fit into either of the new family schemes, he drifted further westward still landing rock bottom on skid row in Los Angeles at the foot of the Beethoven statue, the last and ultimate of his surrogate fathers.

The story begins when Ayers meets his guardian angel, the author, Steve Lopez, who knows a good story is staring him in the face when he sees a tattered homeless black man sensitively playing Mozart and Beethoven in the downtown LA subway tunnel. A shaky and tenuous friendship is struck in which Lopez takes Ayers on as a lifetime humanitarian project. Both men are immensely enriched by the friendship: Ayers in part recovers some of his missed dreams and gets pulled in off the streets; Lopez learns about classical music, about the horrors of America's embarrassing mental health situation, and more importantly, finds his own humanity and soul.

Altogether this is a beautifully told story without the fakery of a normal American melodrama. I can't wait to see the movie. Five Stars

t starts as a newspaper story right out of a 1930s movie.

Newspaper columnist hurries back to the office. On the way, he sees a middle-aged African-American man, in rags, playing Beethoven on a shabby violin. Could that be a story?

A few weeks later, the journalist returns.

This time he notices that the violin has only two strings.

The violinist is philosophical about that. These things happen when you're broke, he says --- you get used to doing without, you play the best you can.

And what about the names he's scrawled, with a rock, on the pavement?

Oh. Those. My Juilliard classmates.

Now Steve Lopez, ace columnist for the Los Angeles Times, has the makings of 800 great words. This is like a genius tumbling from Harvard to hobo --- how did Nathaniel Ayers get here? And then, of course, how will the attention that Lopez lavishes on Ayers, in his columns and in their conversations, turn his life around?

That's the start of a decent book. But it's not this one. For after the first LA Times story produces a massive reader response --- including gifts of stringed instruments --- the idea of a "second chance" becomes important to Lopez and Ayers' newfound fans. After all, that's the American way. You go out there an unknown, you come back as American Idol. Cue the applause, spare us the complications.

But at the center of this book is mental illness, which is, for Ayers, deep and seemingly intractable. He snapped at Juilliard, had treatment, then both fell between the cracks and wanted to --- he refuses therapy or medication, finding peace only in playing classical music near a statue of Beethoven.

Steve Lopez walks into a swinging door when he befriends Nathaniel Ayers. Lopez has a wife and kids and a career that runs on adrenaline; to be with Ayers, he must surrender to the emotional and intellectual swings of a crazy person. Is Ayers getting better with attention? Will it change him to meet his Juilliard classmate, Yo-Yo Ma? And, at the bottom line, will he ever decide that thieves and government agents won't rip him off if he moves into an apartment??

Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. are in the movie; no way would Tom Cruise volunteer for the role of Steve Lopez. Cruise apparently believes --- as does the father of Nathaniel Ayers --- that mental illness is a choice and that therapy and medication merely mask the problem. In these pages, Lopez finds himself dealing with a more complex reality: People as damaged as Nathaniel Ayers do better with care and therapy, and then they may well do worse. There's no straight line. And as for total healing, don't hold your breath.

But something else is at play here, and as Lopez tells the story of an unlikely friendship, I came to see why readers fall in love with this book. It's something simple, and, as a result, extremely moving. It is the power simply of noticing another person, and caring, and continuing to care.

"Relationship is primary," a doctor tells Lopez. "It is possible to cause seemingly biochemical changes through human emotional involvement. You literally have changed his chemistry by being his friend."

That cuts both ways; "The Soloist" is also the story of the biochemical changes that friendship with Nathaniel Ayers forge in Steve Lopez. If you are open to this book, you may find yourself veering off your own well-traveled brain pathways into fresh territory. That's a big dividend from 270 pages you can read in an evening.

Six stars. A "there but for the grace of god"... book. Ordinary people can do extraordinary things. I used to play the bass, and I knew even knew Gary Karr. I love classical music. I kept finding myself wiping away tears of joy.

Read the book, but avoid the movie. The movie was, in a word, horrid.

In November of 2008 The Soloist will debut on the big screen. Starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. and directed by Joe Wright (Atonment and Pride & Prejudice) it has the makings of a hit film. Before it was a film, The Soloist was a series of articles written by Steve Lopez for the Los Angeles Times. And between the two it is also a bestselling book. It tells of the unlikely meeting and the even more unlikely friendship between Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers.

Nathaniel Ayers was a prodigy, an African American musician who was accepted to Juliard to play and to study classical bass. During his second year at that school he developed schizophrenia and was quickly unable to function in such a demanding environment. He was forced to drop out. Before long he was broke and homeless, living on the streets. But despite the adversity in his life, his musical talent did not abandon him. Neither did his passion for classical music.

Thirty years later reporter Steve Lopez walked by him as Ayers was standing in Los Angeles' Skid Row playing a two-string violin. Intrigued by the possibilities of a good story, Ayers wrote about this strange "Violin Man" and was shocked by the reaction these articles received. But as time passed, Ayers became less of a curiosity and more of a friend. Though still inflicted with his illness and exhibiting many of its more pronounced and erratic symptoms, Lopez takes a real interest in his new friend and helps him find permanent lodging, reconnects him to his family and even connects him to the classical music scene in L.A..

The Soloist is a good book and one that is carried along by an intriguing story. While many will find the ending a mite disappointing, it is still worth the journey to get there. The lack of total redemption and recovery at the end of the book, though disappointing, is a mark of the book's realness. Like so much of life there is a happy ending, to be sure, but not as happy an ending as we may have liked.

Steve Lopez, a reporter for the LOS ANGELES TIMES, sees a derelict on L.A.'s Skid Row playing a two-stringed violin and is sure that there is a story there. And what a story it is. What began as a column for Lopez's newspaper eventually became this heartwarming book THE SOLOIST from which the film by the same name starring Jamie Foxx as Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, the brilliant musician who sadly is cursed with schizophrenia, and Robert Downey Junior as Lopez was made. Mr. Lopez interviewed members of Mr. Ayers' family-- particularly his sister Jennifer Moore from Atlanta-- as well as former teachers and students from Julliard where Mr. Ayers was a brilliant student of the double bass before he became mentally ill, to flesh out his newspaper columns that produced so much interest in the plight of this homeless man in love with Beethoven and who basically lived out of a grocery shopping cart. So many people came forward with musical instruments for Mr. Ayers, that he eventually amassed two cellos, six violins, a double bass and a piano for his enjoyment. He also was given cello lessons by Peter Snyder of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a crafty move which was orchestrated by Lopez as a way to get Ayers out of the street and into an apartment. And Mr. Ayers ultimately met Yo-Yo Ma, one of his musical idols. "'I remember your hands from Julliard,'"-- where both men had played in the same orchestra-- Ayers enthusiastically tells Mr. Ma upon meeting him.

Although this book is entitled THE SOLOIST, it really is as much about the writer as it is his subject. Mr. Lopez obviously is the most decent of people and is quick to acknowledge that Mr. Ayers has given him far more than he has given to Mr. Ayers. Mark Ragins, Lopez's "on-call doctor" reminds the journalist: "'It is possible to cause seemingly biochemical changes through human emotional involvement. You [Lopez] literally have changed his chemistry [Ayers'] by being his friend.'" Lopez is not sure if he has changed Ayers' chemistry or not but recognizes their unusual but deep friendship. "He's changed my chemistry too." Mr. Lopez is now a lover of classical music although his beginning violin lessons with Ayers were less than successful. "If a friend is someone who inspires, who challenges, who sends you in search of some truer sense of yourself, Nathaniel is indeed a friend." More from Lopez on their friendship: "Nathaniel is a man unmasked, his life is a public display. We connect in part because there is nothing false about him, and I come away from every encounter more attuned to my own feelings than I would be after, say, an interview with the mayor or the governor. Nathaniael turns my gaze inward. . . I'll never have a richer reward than knowing him well enough to tell his story."

Mr. Lopez is a fine, insightful writer indeed. His descriptions of his life with his wife and daughter are just as touching as those of Mr. Ayers. His profound words about his two-year-old daughter Caroline are as beautiful as anything any contemporary novelist has written: "I've caught all the big milestones, but the really good stuff is nothing you can write in a journal. It's an expression that only you can see the changes in, it's the emergence of a personality unique to the world, it's the way she comes out of the bath with her hair all slicked back and you catch a glimpse of what she might look like when she is older."

I finished this book that I cannot recommend too highly thinking that Messers Ayers and Lopez are both lucky men to have found each other. THE SOLOIST will make you sing.

The Soloist by Steve Lopez was such an excellent read. I related to the music side because I am a pianist and the mental illness side. I've never had Schizophrenia, but when feeling down I know how revitalizing music is. This was a warm, touching story that pulls you in and makes you care about Mr. Nathaniel Ayers. I could feel and understand his love for the music. I would like to know how he's doing and what became of him. I have never felt that way after reading a story. The story just touches the humanity in me and I think in everyone who reads it.

I found the book to be inspiring from a number of points of view. Anyone concerned about the plight of the homeless or working in mental health or human services could find the book well worth reading. The reader who is musically inclined or a lover of music will find it equally meaningful. What is has to say about those who contributed to the cause is inspiring, from any vantage point. A real boost if one's faith in humanity is tested in our times.