John Minahan Livres

Few of us will ever know the satisfaction of becoming number one in our professions; in music, the odds are astronomical. Musicologists tell us that in the ideal--or abstract--situation, an individual is genetically predisposed with a special gift, works at it from infancy, isolated from distractions, and denied any choice in the matter, until the discipline develops into an almost monomaniacal drive for perfection.Buddy Rich achieved that perfection. The cost was very high.This book was written in the form of a diary, researched by the author as he traveled with Buddy Rich to various cities in the US, Canada, England, and Scotland. It was not intended to be an authorative analysis of an eminent contemporary musician or a detailed biographical treatment. It is a selective account of representative events in the life of a musical genius, an attempt to reflect aspects of his complex personality and the role played by his family, friends, and enemies--real and imagined.

The Music of Time is a riviting life story that reads like a fine novel, giving voice to the author's sensibilities, secrets, and fears, without traces of inhibition. All the major and minor characters are here, an astonishing variety of men and women who have influenced the writer's life and work over a period of six decades. We discover precisely how he learned the craft of novel writing, his lifelong passion for music that became a catalyst for his creativity, and how an unexpected insight at Harvard would dramatically change his life. This book is the haunting self-portrait of a truly gifted American artist, still working, whose reputation is secure among the finest writers of his generation.

This is the haunting and exquisitely crafted mystery of Eddie Conroy, a brilliant but homeless middle-aged man living in New York.. Working as a dishwasher after a long military career, Conroy suffers from a multiple-personality disorder that has no known cure, alternating from the defensive posture of a street-smart functional illiterate to the highly visible stature of an animal-rights advocate.When a 500-pound male Bengal tiger escapes from the Central Park Zoo during an animal-rights demonstration, Conroy's close friend is brutally killed by the animal. A logistical nightmare develops for the police, who must take the unprecedented step of closing the park to all pedestrian and vehicular traffic until the tiger is captured or killed. After several days and nights of intense searching by police officers, the hungry and disoriented animal is spooked by gunfire. And virtually all attempts at control and protection are lost. Throughout the upper East Side, a panic ensues, exacerbated by sensation-seeking media coverage.Mr. Minahan draws indelible and thought-provoking parallel lines between the instinctive actions of the tiger and the intuitive insights of Eddie Conroy, linking their lives in a compelling metaphysical alliance that is difficult to forget.

Roman nach d. Drehbuch v. Phelan, Anna Hamilton. 12 Phot.