Alex Ross's New Book

I really loved The Rest Is Noise by New Yorker classical music critic Alex Ross, so I’m thrilled to hear FSG will be publishing his next book in September, called Listen to This.

A little surprising, though to see that the book is going from manuscript to print in a little under 9 months:

I have a habit of finishing books in hotels. I sent off The Rest Is Noise from the Omni in downtown Los Angeles; Listen To This, which Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish at the end of September, was dispatched last week from a Marriott in Park City, Utah. The new book offers a panoramic view of the musical scene, taking in Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Verdi, Brahms, Marian Anderson, Frank Sinatra, Cecil Taylor, Led Zeppelin, Björk, Radiohead, Mitsuko Uchida, Esa-Pekka Salonen, John Luther Adams, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Bob Dylan, and the Malcolm X Shabazz High School Marching Band. In the Preface, I say that the aim is to “approach music not as a self-sufficient sphere but as a way of knowing the world.”

I’m sure Ross is a solid writer, and I know parts of this book have already been published elsewhere, but isn’t this a really short span for editing, proofing, printing, marketing, etc by general publishing standards?