On 8/24/05 9:39 AM, in article
Post by p***@hotmail.comOver the years there has been much interest in the life and career of
Michael Rabin and many have lamented the absence of a biography.
Amadeus Press has just brought out the "The First, authorized
biography" and it's a good one. "Michael Rabin America's
Virtuoso Violinist" by Anthony Feinstein is well worth reading. It
traces Rabin's life and times and does it well. The book consists of
the usual getting from point A to B and so on but it also includes
excerpts from many of Michael's letters and interviews with friends
colleagues and teachers. I knew him well having spent two summers with
him at Meadowmount in the mid 1950's and continued to bump into him
over the years until his untimely death in 1972. A wonderful violinist
and a much-misunderstood human being, the book clears up many of the
issues and rumors that have circulated over the years.
While going on-line to order my copy, Peter, I spotted the following
"review".
All I can say is WOW!
TD
Let's start with the positive! The book contains lots of nice photos. While
a few are private and previously unpublished, the vast majority were
specifically taken for publicity purposes. The cover photo is a very nice
publicity shot and the back of the dustjacket sports a lovely reproduction
of an oil painting that's a portrait of a young Michael Rabin playing his
violin. There are long quotes from Michael's letters to a few selected
people. Some of those excerpts are interesting, although unfortunately
Feinstein does little to interpret them adequately.
This book is billed as "the first, authorized biography." Well, there is
generally only one "authorized biography" for any given individual, so this
statement is a bit confusing. At least it is clear that this is indeed the
first biography of Michael Rabin to appear in book form.
While I wouldn't be likely to dispute Feinstein's statement of how many
pages the violnist's log of his air miles contains, other aspects of the
volume do not inspire confidence in the author's command of his facts.
Instead, they would make a critical reader doubt the author's research
abilities. There's no discography, no log of performances, no bibliography.
For a first biography, and one that has some of the scholarly apparatus too,
these are glaring omissions.
Even though there are copious footnotes, the inaccuracies elsewhere in the
volume make a reader wonder whether all of them are accurate. A check of
some of these references reveals that they are often not in proper or
consistent format and, in at least one case that I have already been able to
identify simply by emailing a couple of official archives, Feinstein has
cited a publication that never existed.
The book reads more like a first draft than a final version. Without
cheating and checking the photos, it's hard to imagine what most of the
players look or sound like. Sometimes the text and the photos seem to
disagree. One person interviewed describes Michael, during the last six
months of his life, as being "very hairy" (see page 207), yet among the
photos bound into the volume between pages 88 and 89, there's a photo of an
18-year-old Michael, already with a receding hairline, and his father (the
latter shown without his shirt). Bertine, Michael's sister, stands in the
middle, between them. Both men are in shorts. Michael is also wearing a
short-sleeved tee-shirt and the photo proves that Michael's arms and legs
weren't hairy then. His father's arms, legs and torso weren't especially
hairy either. Since men tend to inherit patterns of hair growth from the
male parent, you can draw your own conclusions. Either the interviewee was
mis-remembering the facts or some medical condition or drug reaction caused
the change. In the latter case Feinstein should have explained why it
happened, as long as he's taking the trouble to report it.
There's no real sense of place given by the author's text. The violinist's
own letters convey far more atmosphere than Feinstein does. The writing
style in this volume is decidedly pedestrian. Feinstein goes out of his way
to state the obvious. In discussing the prodigy's work as a child and
adolescent, for example, he writes on page 68: "The role models Michael were
[sic.] encouraged to emulate were all adults who had stellar careers in
music." As you can see, the editing isn't wonderful either! Anyone notice
that, in this sentence, the subject is singular ("Michael") while the verb
is plural ("were")? In any case, why would Michael (or any other aspiring
performer, for that matter) emulate anyone other than major mature artists?
Feinstein's volume seems less a true biography than "Michael Rabin as seen
through the eyes of four people"--Bertine, Adrienne Rosenbaum (his first
love interest), Lewis Kaplan and June LeBell. His longtime accompanist,
Mitchell Andrews, has only a few paltry mentions, although he worked with
the violinist for a decade, and the same is true of Schuyler Chapin, who
worked with Michael for about five years at Columbia Artists Management.
Outside of critical reviews of Michael's performances and items quoted
selectively to reflect the author's various biases, the perspectives of
other individuals who knew the violinist well are rare indeed in these
pages.
There are seeming contradictions in the text itself, also. For example, it's
extremely difficult for a reader to reconcile the fact that, on page 213,
June LeBell, when describing Michael's death, states, "It was as if he had
come running out of the kitchen and had slipped..." Yet, on p. 218,
Feinstein states, "...the barbiturates Michael took made him drowsy. He lay
down to rest. On rising quickly, perhaps to answer the telephone, he
slipped..." How many of us who are relatively sane habitually lie down on
the kitchen floor to take a nap? Do these stories sound consistent to you?
For a book that aims to clarify what happened to this violinist who died
young, illogic like this doesn't go very far toward achieving that goal.
Might this be another editorial gaffe? How could Feinstein himself not have
noticed this inconsistency? Perhaps a description of the layout of the
violinist's apartment might have answered this question or perhaps it
wouldn't. But Feinstein makes no attempt whatever to deal with this problem
and so the reader will never know!
Feinstein quotes one musician's memoirs about Michael's drug use in 1970
because the passage supports his theory. However, he doesn't mention another
passage from the same musician's memoirs that describes the violinist's
death, from the point of view of someone who claimed to have been present.
Undoubtedly this omission happened because it totally contradicts quotes
Feinstein uses from Lewis Kaplan and June LeBell as well as his own
interpretation of the event. He doesn't reproduce and then debunk this
passage; he simply ignores it. Nor does Feinstein examine at all critically
the memoir-writer's initial statement, the one he did choose to quote. Yet,
when questioned by others, another participant said to have taken part in
that little scenario denies that it happened. If the accuracy of one passage
has been called into question, might not the other one also be suspect?
Inaccuracies and evidence of lack of care are many and include both misuse
of English and mistranslations. For instance, on page 1, Feinstein refers to
a career being "hoisted upon him [Michael]." Although at times the violinist
considered his career a heavy burden, clearly the word used is incorrect and
Feinstein should have said "foisted" rather than "hoisted." The book is
filled with such howlers. As an example of mistranslation, I can offer the
following: the word "haimish" doesn't mean "homely," as Feinstein translates
it on page 200. "Homely" is an English word that is generally used as a
synonym for "unattractive" or "ugly" and is almost always applied only to
women. The quote here, however, is from a thank-you note in which the
violinist was lauding the hospitality he had received. The correct
translation, therefore, is "home-like" or "possessing a friendly and warm
atmosphere." Or words to that effect. In addition, it's just plain
irritating to see "[sic.]" every time the word "Prokofieff" appears in one
of the violnist's letters, as if he'd misspelled the composer's name. (There
is still a "Prokofieff Foundation," after all!) That's not a misspelling,
it's just a variant transliteration, of the Russian composer's name. The
period Feinstein is writing about is one when two competing transliterations
existed and one has become more popular in recent years than the other. But
that doesn't make one spelling "correct" and the other "incorrect."
Feinstein uses the testimony of a neighbor--a busy ballet dancer--to "prove"
that Michael had no girlfriends during the period ca. 1960-68. This dancer
only lived near him for a couple of years toward the end of that time. How
would she know? Was she watching his door 24/7? Was she with him on tour?
Was she with him when he wasn't home? No.
Another "proof" Feinstein cites that Michael didn't have any girlfriends
during that period is that he didn't introduce any either to Bertine or to
Lewis Kaplan. Michael was in his twenties and older at that point. He was
living in his own apartment from 1963 on. Did he have to introduce a woman
to his sister or to an old friend of his with whom he was no longer quite as
close as formerly (and who was no longer his personal confidant)in order to
have permission to date her? Please, Mr. Feinstein, let's get real here! I
can think of at least three women, known to have spent varying amounts of
time with the violnist during those years, whom this book has totally
ignored. Their names are not even mentioned. Why? Because they and/or their
relationships with Michael, perhaps, don't fit his theories!
Other misapprehensions under which Feinstein labors include the fact that
the private school Michael attended for about two years was located at 132
West 60th Street. It wasn't. A quick trip to the Professional Children's
School website (sorry but you'll have to look this up yourselves because
Amazon doesn't permit urls in book reviews!) will confirm this fact. When
Michael was a student there (prior to 1956), it was located in a commercial
building at 61st Street and Broadway. On page 22, Feinstein identifies the
young Michael's grade of B+ in science as being "below average." Well, that
simply isn't so. The "B+" means that Michael's work in that class was
decidedly above average. Michael never appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show
although Feinstein says he did. Feinstein refers to the "Bronx School of
Science" when he means the "Bronx High School of Science." Then, in
discussing 1971, he states, "...Arthur Judson had long departed Columbia
Artists." Well, I suppose that's at least partially correct. Arthur Judson
departed this life (not just Columbia Artists Management) in 1963.
Rather than go on with this already-long recital of errors, half-truths and
apparent massaging of the facts to fit the author's theories (or, perhaps,
those of the violinist's family and whoever else had to pass on the
manuscript since this is an "authorized biography"), I'll stop here and say
that, because such sloppiness abounds, the accuracy of this volume is not to
be trusted. Save your money! This jumble of misinformation is no bargain.
Those interested in violins and violinists, classical music in general,
psychology, child prodigies and/or biographies that are interesting to read
should await a more perceptive, balanced, responsible and well-realized book
before plunking down their hard-earned money.