"Frank Conroy: The Triumph of Arch" is an article printed in the September 1990 issue of GQ to serve as an introduction to an excerpt from Conroy's forthcoming novel, Body and Soul, which was entitled "The Music Store".
Summary[]
Having long tried, and largely failed, to play clarinet and piano, Vonnegut is aware that something makes musicians different. Conroy, a jazz pianist, has explained that this is because they process music with the language centers of their brains. Whether true or not, Vonnegut wishes to believe this. Based on "what he chooses to write about", Conroy clearly has many unhappy memories which, by both writing and piano, he forces into "tones and cadences that... are arch and dainty". Some jazz musicians "let agony show through rips in their otherwise seamless performances", but others like the pianist Fats Waller—who, "being both fat and black in America", probably had his share of unhappy memories—somehow never did. Like Waller, Conroy is childlike when he plays piano, "amazed by the enchanting sounds he makes so easily", and is probably similar when he writes.[1]
- ↑ "Frank Conroy: The Triumph of Arch", GQ, September 1990, pg. 370.