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You're A Philistine If You Don't

I went to the Sydney launch for 'Glissando' by David Musgrave.

When it comes to looking back over his life, Archie Fliess has got some understanding to do. So begins a sprawling reflection on his life during the early twentieth century, starting the day the fortunes of Archie and brother Reggie change when they are taken to be the rightful owners of the property built by their grandfather in country NSW. Along their journey, they are introduced to an odd collection of family and caretakers who don’t always have the best interests of the boys at heart. Archie becomes embroiled in the mystery surrounding his grandfather’s life, and as the two stories “ Archie’s and his grandfather’s“ unravel, we see familiar themes of disappointment and failed ambition. Glissando is a tale that travels along many threads, told in a playful, philosophical voice reminiscent of Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, with shades of Patrick White’s Voss. It’s an Australian classic, a satirical romp of epic proportions.

Here's an interview with said Musgrave.

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The title, Glissando: A Melodrama, immediately informs the reader that music will underscore everything in the novel. It is present both in metaphor and as a constant accompaniment to the characters’ lives. How did the musical effect of ‘glissando’ in particular come to be of such central importance to the novel?

One of the main themes of Glissando is the arts and how they are interrelated and the role art can play in our lives, and  the focus is really on architecture and music, although food, memory and writing also play important roles. The musical aspect came naturally, as I have played and written music since I was a child; the architectural aspect I guess came from a preoccupation with forebears who were colonial architects (and who feature in the book). Because I was interested in the arts in combination, Glissando refers to the musical technique of the glissade, to the house Glissando where the narrator lives and writes (the man who built it conceived of the house as a glissade realised in architectural form) and to the dying fall of the narrator’s life. So, in a way, music itself is a kind of master trope in the book for how art can shape our lives, for good and for ill.

He's an interesting dude, but he's even more interesting in print! :) Jokes aside, have a read.

If you're preference is on-line shopping of books, then you can find it HERE!

So be a good little cultural munchkin and buy it now! Buy it today and you won't regret the purchase! :)

Here's a review at SPUNC:

Glissando: A Melodrama is the latest novel from Sleepers Publishing to receive rave reviews.

David Musgrave's first novel, Glissando travels along many threads: It is an Australian story, told in a playful, philosophical voice. It has a burlesque bravado similar to Steve Toltz' Fraction of the Whole. It is a satirical romp of epic proportions.

"Glissando is something unique: a thoroughly contemporary novel that marries the intensity and fervour of Patrick Whiteto the displaced cosmopolitan wit of Murray Bail and Gerald Murnane.
-James Bradley

Here's a review at Readings.com:

Here's a review in Rupert's press:

DON'T, whatever you do, mistake David Musgrave's first extended prose fiction for a novel.

Recall instead the satires of Pope, Swift, Rabelais and Thomas Pynchon: parodists, whose intentions could not be more serious, storytellers whose characters are not facsimiles of the human so much as super-sized grotesques, scintillating minds on stilts.

But Glissando is also something apart from these. Satire on the European model requires a shared moral framework, an unspoken agreement about what a culture's philosophical underpinnings may be. In these pages, an eccentric Viennese architect named Wilhelm Fliess arrives in rural NSW during the middle years of the 19th century, hopeful of building a house based on designs far from Europe's deadening norms. In keeping with his high-minded Mitteleuropean ideals, Wilhelm has legal documents drawn up to ensure that the traditional owners of the land he purchased will not be dispossessed.

And so the review goes. It's pretty nice. Anyway, go buy it and read it. Heck, just buy it to adorn your shelves with it so you can tell your grandchildren in years to come, "hey look, I own a first edition copy of 'Glissando' by David Musgrave".