LUCID SOUL BOOK FULL
"At the precise instant of the crash, followed a split second later by the bell, he hallucinated the full sound of an orchestra and a piano playing two chords in succession, the first chord dissonant and the second consonant. As the wrecking ball crashes against a nearby structure, causing an E-flat silver bell over the door of his store to ring faintly, Claude finds his inspiration. Then through a wonderfully inventive complication, he inherits the Third Avenue building that houses Aaron Weisfeld's music store, and he ends up holding out against a real-estate developer determined to demolish his building and put up a block-wide high-rise. He feels a sense of fraudulence common to artists, worsened by his never having learned who his father is.
His marriage founders and his creativity dries up. But in a reversal of his mounting good fortune, he wins no competitions.Īnd then, almost providentially, Claude's life comes apart.
His fame as a pianist spreads, and he even begins to compose music. Weisfeld steers Claude to the right teachers, who help him develop skills that lead to a job as an accompanist to the child of a Park Avenue family.Ĭlaude's exposure to wealth prompts him to apply successfully for a scholarship to an exclusive private school, which leads to admission to a prestigious college, where he meets a rich woman whom he marries after they graduate. Though he spends most of his days dreamily roaming his Upper East Side neighborhood while his unmarried mother drives a taxi, his budding interest in the piano attracts the patronage of a local music-store owner, Aaron Weisfeld. A rich novel of development with the somewhat familiar title "Body and Soul," it shows that the world can be wonderfully forgiving of genius, so forgiving as to prove a handicap.įrom earliest childhood, Claude Rawlings's gift for music is recognized and rewarded. Oscar Wilde once observed that "the public is wonderfully tolerant it forgives everything but genius." Yet the plot of Frank Conroy's irresistible new book suggests quite the opposite.
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