Word: fiedler
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...Marc Fiedler '78, a quadriplegic who lived in Quincy House with an attendant after becoming disabled before his junior year and who is currently deputy director of the Office of Handicapped Affairs of Massachusetts, sympathizes with Mattlin's problem. "The relationship with the attendant is a very difficult one. It's imbalanced by the fact that he's always doing things for you and you can't reciprocate," Fiedler says...
...observation is provocative and could be illuminating, but it jangles oddly at the end of 167 pages of trivia and adulation for Fiedler's popularity, talent and dedication; the quote just sits there...
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...
Thus the "irreverent memoir" winds up telling little about Fiedler. It reveals more about Dickson, as an assistant's grateful tribute to the experience of working with his maestro. Dickson's compendium of reminiscences and moments, a handful of which do seem interesting enough to be memorable, can, given sufficient effort and imagination from the reader, furnish the tools to create the picture of what it was like to know Fiedler and the Pops--but the image remains blurred and ineffective for those without the urge to do-it-yourself...