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?

More from Conversational Reading:

1. Alex Ross: Year's Best Alex Ross, the classical music critic for The new Yorker, breaks down the best things he’s heard this year, with links to New Yorker articles,...
2. The Rest Is Noise “Glossary” One of the things I most liked about Alex Ross’s survey of 20th century classical were his readings of the music. In many cases, he...
3. Can You Read with Music? At The Guardian, Sam Jordison says no to reading with music, of any kind: As for novels, forget it. Even music that doesn’t ask too...
4. Book Banning Can’t go too long in this country without some busybody trying to ban books from high school reading lists because of prurient content. Blah, blah,...
5. Classical Year in Review Alex Ross offers his favorite classical recordings from 2008. Lots of good stuff here, including: “Hommage à Messiaen”; Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano (Deutsche Grammophon). John Adams,...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.