Review by Booklist Review
Ricky Ian Gordon writes songs for the musical theater and for opera. His themes and topics are wide-ranging: the Civil War, Langston Hughes, Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, an operatic adaptation of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. "Music," he writes, "is a language that never stops talking in my head." He makes that clear from the start of this chaotic and messy but always life-affirming memoir. Shame is another big part of his story. He writes honestly and profusely about his addictions and about making the same mistakes over and over again. Born on Long Island (his family name anglicized from Goldenberg), Gordon's earliest memory is of his mother washing him in a sink in the laundry room with his father looming behind her. Even at this young age, he feels urges that he understands might be considered wrong. But he also knows instinctively that "I couldn't risk getting caught." It set the blueprint of a lifelong pattern of behavior that triggers feelings of guilt and disgust. This is a big book, both literally and figuratively, full of big emotions and bigger tragedies, shameful secrets and bodily obsessions as well as the thrill of creativity, the sadness of ordinary life, and all the other moments in-between. By his conclusion, he wonders if sharing his life with the world is worth it. Might it be useful to someone? It is this generosity of spirit that is perhaps this book's greatest virtue.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Composer Gordon's ungainly debut autobiography teeters unsteadily between illuminating and off-putting. Beginning with his birth on Long Island in 1956 and plodding forward to 2024, Gordon provides an exhaustive and often lurid look at the art and experiences that shaped him. Early sections focus on Gordon's sexually tangled youth, during which he developed an incestuous attraction to his father (never acted upon) and, by 15, equated "older heterosexual men... having sex with me" with affection. A love of music, and opera in particular, grounded him. Admitted to Carnegie Mellon at age 16, he studied piano, composition, and acting. While discussing the intricacies of his own compositions, Gordon touches on how artists including Joni Mitchell and Stephen Sondheim influenced him. After he graduates from Carnegie Mellon and makes a name for himself, the book dishes on these and other legendary figures, sharing uncomfortable anecdotes about "sitting with a... clearly jonesing Liza Minelli" and developing tense rivalries with playwright Tony Kushner and composer Adam Guettel. The effect is overstimulating and undernourishing, with affecting threads about addiction and AIDS-era New York crowded out before they can be fully developed. Gordon's rationale--that other artists might benefit from knowing about his "messy, disgusting, glorious, shameful" evolution--fails to justify this undisciplined ramble. It's a disappointment. (July)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In his honest and complex memoir, Gordon digs deep into his background--youth, family, coming-of-age, and beyond--to analyze his life, obstacles, and creative direction. After receiving a childhood giftbook of opera stories, his passion for this art form took hold. It blossomed with recordings, live performances, studies, and compositions. He grew to embrace an eclectic range of other musical forms. Concurrently, his life progressed with personal turmoil, including a substance use condition, grief over losing friends and a beloved partner to AIDS, distress over family issues, and the challenging quest to secure a place in the mercurial world of music. He emerges as a gifted creator; his acclaimed compositional output--operas, such as The Grapes of Wrath, art songs and instrumental and theatrical works--has been presented by leading artists and performing groups. The memoir's reflections on music, Gordon's creative process, and anecdotes from the artistic arena are especially captivating. VERDICT A unique and detailed self-portrait that will prompt readers to seek recordings of Gordon's innovative works. The discography and lists of compositions and publications are thorough and helpful.--Carol J. Binkowski
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
The noted composer and doyen of modern opera writes, brilliantly, of the many obstacles life has thrown in his path. "Music, sex, and addiction have intersected or collided in my life, catalysts for confusion, beauty, and restlessness." So writes Gordon, the author of such acclaimed operas as The Garden of the Finzi-Continis and My Life With Albertine. The music runs throughout this episodic memoir as "the cause of most of my joy in life, as well as much of my unhappiness. Sometimes it's a bed of nails, at others, a field of clouds." It does not emerge easily, but when it does, it often does gloriously, fed by a diet that includes Neil Young and Joni Mitchell as well as Paul Hindemith, Olivier Messiaen, and Stephen Sondheim. As to the last composer, Gordon writes about a tangled relationship that began and ended with admiration but numerous missteps, including getting drunk enough in his home "to go vomit so violently [that a friend] has to peel me up off the floor of the bathroom." Gordon's reconciliation with Sondheim is one of many supremely touching moments in a text laced with pain: the loss of friends, family, and lovers to AIDS, addiction, and age. Regarding AIDS, Gordon's frontline memoir is as valuable as Larry Kramer's. He writes that as a caregiver, he had essentially been given carte blanche from the medical community to commit murder when the suffering became too great to bear: "We were all basically assigned euthanasia, and it was up to us to decide when to do it." Gordon's scars are many, but clearly he has recovered from those wounds, as from his addictions, well enough to produce a body of work that, though born in difficulty, is revelatory all the same. A superb memoir that reveals the pleasures--but far more, the pains--of the creative life. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
