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Literary Review
Music world
ANURADHA ROY
Bob Dylan in concert.
GRANTA 76 offers not discourse but imaginative essays coupled with brisk jabs and short stories, all with music as their theme. Julian Barnes, who has played around with biographical writing before in Flaubert's Parrot, has a stark fragment from an imagined diary of a renowned musician in his decline. The musician's name is never given away though the story deliberately teases you with clues.
In another fictionalised reconstruction, Janice Galloway evokes the early life of child prodigy Clara Weick, the composer and pianist who finally broke free of her tyrannical piano teacher father to marry Robert Schumann. A prodigy's life is always difficult, but which of us hasn't occasionally wished we were one? You'll be thankful for mediocrity after this.
There is a story by Amit Chaudhuri in which a music masterji's world collides poignantly with those of his pupils, comprising Bombay's party-fatigued company wives. A photo-essay on Bob Dylan maps the intersections between his life and those of his photographer over 30 years. Those three pictures of Dylan alone make this book worth having.
Granta 76, Granta Books, Rs. 475.
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