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Living Section of the San Bernardino SUN February 22, 2004 Issue 
The Piano Tuner By Daniel Mason 
The Extraordinary Journey of a Man and a Piano Without a doubt Daniel Mason's first novel, "The Piano Tuner" is a seductive and lyrical literary piece that continues to haunt one's subconscious long after the book is closed. At first glance the book appears to be deceptively simple - the story of the extraordinary journey of an ordinary English piano tuner. But nothing is as it seems at first. The novel is deep and complex, revealing a tale within a tale within a tale. "The Piano Tuner" was the January book selection of the High Noon Literary Salon and many of the insights into the book I gained are the result of our discussion. Edgar Drake, a middle-aged piano tuner specializing in tuning Erard pianos receives a most unusual commission in 1886 from the British War Office in London: to travel to Northeast Burma on which the British have only a tenuous hold, to tune the Erard piano of Surgeon-Major Anthony Carroll on whose piano music and other mysterious qualities the precarious British hold of the Shan States hinges. Edgar and his wife Katherine live an orderly life and thrive on the routine they have established during their long marriage filled with love, music and unspoken understanding. On the day prior to Edgar's departure they sit on the Thames Embankment watching the boats go by and as if by order think of the same peace of music that speaks to them of that scene. Yet, Edgar's exterior belies a richer inner life and an ineffable longing for adventure. The author hints at this with the definition of 'fugue' introducing Book One. "Fugue, meaning literally flight" is used in music to describe a certain type of musical composition and in psychiatry to describe "a flight from one's own identity." As Edgar sets out on the long journey that will take him to Doctor Carroll's fort Mae Lwin on the banks of the sultry Salween River in the Shan States via Alexandria, the Red Sea, Rangoon and Mandalay amongst other places, Edgar prepares for his commission by reading the history of the region and the contradictory reports of the War Office and Surgeon-Major Carroll. Edgar searches the reams and reams of paper given to him for even the slightest hint of what might be wrong with the piano. He treats us to the fascinating history of the Erard in detail, he describes scenes from the journey in minutia, he writes to Katherine about the unusual customs and dress of natives and of the tales of other passengers. Woven throughout are the inexplicably seductive and intoxicating powers of music. While crossing the Red Sea Edgar hears the tale of the Man with One Story whose ears have stopped sensing sound after hearing the most perfect song. Edgar listens to the tales and legends of how Doctor Carroll mesmerizes and woos the natives into submission with music, of how the Shan people had allowed him to build Mae Lwin deep into the remote jungle by the undulating Salween River, as a result of him playing a Shan love ditty on a flute. "It worked like a miracle," the storyteller says, because "no man could kill one who played a song that reminded him of the first time he had fallen in love." When he finally arrives at Mae Lwin, the piano tuner begins to glimpse the magic Carroll uses to keep the peace. He is nothing like the rest of the British soldiers. He has adopted the best of the Shan culture and customs and has given the Shan people the best of Western culture - medical help and music. He treats the natives not as conquered people but as equals. He soothes their battle cries with music, he treats their illnesses and diseases, he collects botanical samples from their rich flora. A revolt for independence is brewing up and bandits roam the lush jungle. The British are anxious for war. Carroll draws the piano tuner into his subterfuge to bring peace to the region. He asks him, no - he orders Edgar to play the piano for an important prince of the Limbin Confederacy which is resisting British rule and later orders him to masquerade as a British officer at the meeting of all the princes of the Limbin Confederacy. "The revolt is over," Carroll announces to the piano tuner. He has succeeded to receive "a conditional surrender and to end the resistance to British rule in exchange for limited autonomy guaranteed by Her Majesty." But peace is not what the British War office wants. Expecting an impending attack, Carroll sends the piano and the tuner away. With her perfect English and sultry looks, is Khin Myo a trap? Did Carroll know that he was betrayed and framed? The many unanswered questions and ambiguous situations in the book jog our minds into long discussions and discoveries of things we might have otherwise overlooked. Daniel Mason is a brilliant young man. He is currently in medical school. After graduating from Harvard he studied malaria on the Thai-Myanmar border where "The Piano Tuner" was conceived and partially written. This is a book about many things. It is about a journey of a man and a piano, about the power of music and man's hunger for power over others. It is about fleeing one's prosaic reality in search of mythical worlds. "Now I understand more and more what Dante and Tennyson wrote about the "Odyssey,"" Carroll tells the piano tuner, "that he wasn't lost, but that after the wonders he had seen, Odysseus couldn't, perhaps didn't want to, return home." Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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