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Tenth
In his new novel—his eleventh—the author of Herma and The Balloonist once again mingles magic into the passions and intrigues of our contemporary world.
Tenth recounts the transformation of Julian Coates, an obscure professor in a California university, into a creative artist--through the force of fate and his own sometimes shaky but violent will. Called upon by an attractive BBC editor to give a radio talk on a German composer, Julian finds himself undertaking the task of completing the composer's unfinished Tenth Symphony—the symphony that has been mysteriously forbidden to the world's greatest composers. He quickly encounters a formidable antagonist: the composers's "pest of a daughter" who owns the rights to his work. Soon Julian is enmeshed in a complicated web of intrigue involving three women; the editor, the heiress, and his blond and placid California mistress.
Tenth begins by attaching itself playfully to a well-known work of world literature—the Adrian Leverkuhn whose music is discussed is the protagonist of Thomas Mann's novel Doctor Faustus. From that point, however, Harris's novel assumes a tone quite its own, light and ironic, then tenebrous and metaphysical by turns. This is a novel directly in the tradition of Harris's previous work, gripping, unsettling, and elegant.
Tenth recounts the transformation of Julian Coates, an obscure professor in a California university, into a creative artist--through the force of fate and his own sometimes shaky but violent will. Called upon by an attractive BBC editor to give a radio talk on a German composer, Julian finds himself undertaking the task of completing the composer's unfinished Tenth Symphony—the symphony that has been mysteriously forbidden to the world's greatest composers. He quickly encounters a formidable antagonist: the composers's "pest of a daughter" who owns the rights to his work. Soon Julian is enmeshed in a complicated web of intrigue involving three women; the editor, the heiress, and his blond and placid California mistress.
Tenth begins by attaching itself playfully to a well-known work of world literature—the Adrian Leverkuhn whose music is discussed is the protagonist of Thomas Mann's novel Doctor Faustus. From that point, however, Harris's novel assumes a tone quite its own, light and ironic, then tenebrous and metaphysical by turns. This is a novel directly in the tradition of Harris's previous work, gripping, unsettling, and elegant.
291 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1984
5 people want to read
About the author
MacDonald Harris
30 books24 followersPseudonym of Donald Heiney
Donald Heiney was born in South Pasadena in 1921. Seastruck from the time he read Stevenson at the age of twelve, he went to sea in earnest as a merchant marine cadet in 1942, sat for his Third Mate's license in 1943, and spent the rest of the war as a naval officer on a fleet oiler. After the war he earned a B.A. at Redlands and a doctorate in comparative literature at the University of Southern California. In 1964 he lived with his wife and son in Salt Lake City where he taught writing and comparative literature.
Taking the pseudonym MacDonald Harris for his fiction, his first story appeared in Esquire in 1947. Since then he has published stories in The Atlantic Monthly, Harpers Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, and The Saturday Evening Post, as well as a number of literary quarterlies. His story "Second Circle" was reprinted in the 1959 O. Henry Collection. Private Demons, his first novel, was published in 1961. Mortal Leap, his second, was finished in the summer of 1963 in Rome.
His novel The Balloonist was nominated for the National Book Award in 1977. He received a 1982 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his entire body of work.
Heiney died in 1993, at age 71, at his home in Newport Beach, California.
Donald Heiney was born in South Pasadena in 1921. Seastruck from the time he read Stevenson at the age of twelve, he went to sea in earnest as a merchant marine cadet in 1942, sat for his Third Mate's license in 1943, and spent the rest of the war as a naval officer on a fleet oiler. After the war he earned a B.A. at Redlands and a doctorate in comparative literature at the University of Southern California. In 1964 he lived with his wife and son in Salt Lake City where he taught writing and comparative literature.
Taking the pseudonym MacDonald Harris for his fiction, his first story appeared in Esquire in 1947. Since then he has published stories in The Atlantic Monthly, Harpers Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, and The Saturday Evening Post, as well as a number of literary quarterlies. His story "Second Circle" was reprinted in the 1959 O. Henry Collection. Private Demons, his first novel, was published in 1961. Mortal Leap, his second, was finished in the summer of 1963 in Rome.
His novel The Balloonist was nominated for the National Book Award in 1977. He received a 1982 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his entire body of work.
Heiney died in 1993, at age 71, at his home in Newport Beach, California.
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March 13, 2014
Such a strange book but enjoyable nonetheless.
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