Word: dickson
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...Dickson...
This "irreverent memoir" of Arthur Fiedler and the Pops, written by his assistant conductor for 40 years, is frustrating to read because Dickson simply cannot write well enough to bring Fiedler's evidently singular personality and career to life. Music buffs, if they concentrate hard, can probably glean from Dickson's anecdotes some sense of the excitement it must have been to work closely with Fiedler over the years, and feel the star-watcher's thrill at the Pops parade of brilliant guest performers; those who suffered through piano lessons and drillwork can catch the allusion and laugh at jazz...
...author's love and admiration for Fiedler, which should have been the book's main strength, become a liability as Dickson eschews probing Fiedler's complex personality, and instead mingles anecdotes of the maestro's famed gruffness, inflexibility and stinginess with attempts to attribute to him every good quality imaginable. Fiedler, it seems, was a difficult man to love. Rarely showing any personal warmth, he treated his three children distantly, frequently annoyed guests by refusing to pay taxi fares, and once asked Black guest artist Roberta Flack is she "did floors." Yet, lifelong didactic and male chauvinist, he managed...
THIS DICHOTOMY could form the book's badly-needed central theme but Dickson unfortunately bumbles. Some of his anecdotes are telling and funny: Fiedler's annual conversation with the New England Provision Company before his end-of-season bash always went: "Hello Sam? Fiedler, here. It's time for that goddam party again." But others do not appear to deserve their build-up, in spite of Dickson's chatty "he told me" style. Neither the maestro nor the family and colleagues Dickson interviewed were strong on bon mots. Certain points simply beg for detail. Dickson lauds Fiedler's genuis...
Preoccupied with the idiosyncratic, conversational--and often trite--surfaces of Fielder's life. Dickson fails to explore or even notice those contradictions which could have been springboards for a sensitive look at the musician's character. At different points. Dickson describes Fiedler as either a cold father or a beaming one. He usually adhered to a renowned stinginess yet would fly discreetly to New York to give a benefit concert out of his own pocket. Likewise, near the book's end Dickson glosses over another probing question, raised in an observation by a Boston Symphony Orchestra friend...