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A review by sophronisba
Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story-How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War by Nigel Cliff
4.0
A really fascinating account of the pianist Van Cliburn and his attachment to Russia, and how that attachment affected his own life and Cold War politics. I knew nothing about this story at all when I picked up the book -- I knew nothing about Van Cliburn except that he was a pianist -- so I learned quite a bit. I think the author does a good job of describing the atmosphere of the Cold War and, later, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and also making it clear why the American intelligence community viewed Van Cliburn with some suspicion after his competition win in Russia.
Cliburn himself comes across as shockingly naive and more than a bit full of himself (at one point he arrives in Washington for a concert, realizes he doesn't have his tuxedo, and calls President Lyndon Johnson to see if he could borrow one -- Johnson obliged). It's believable, given his sheltered upbringing in a small Texas town and the behavior of his ever-present mother, who took helicopter parenting to a whole new level. But by the time the book reached the Sixties I was getting frustrated with him myself, so I can only imagine how exasperating he must have been to deal with.
And one of the few frustrations of the book is that you don't really get a sense of how the people around Cliburn dealt with him. I wouldn't call this a bio; its hyper-focus on Cliburn and Russia means that you don't get a full understanding of what he was like as a person, what his relationship with his mother was like, how he dealt with conflicts between his sexuality (he was gay) and his deep religious beliefs, or really anything else other than his attachment to Russia. That's not really a shortcoming of the book -- the subtitle makes it pretty clear what Cliff wants to focus on in this book -- but it did leave me wanting to know more.
Cliburn himself comes across as shockingly naive and more than a bit full of himself (at one point he arrives in Washington for a concert, realizes he doesn't have his tuxedo, and calls President Lyndon Johnson to see if he could borrow one -- Johnson obliged). It's believable, given his sheltered upbringing in a small Texas town and the behavior of his ever-present mother, who took helicopter parenting to a whole new level. But by the time the book reached the Sixties I was getting frustrated with him myself, so I can only imagine how exasperating he must have been to deal with.
And one of the few frustrations of the book is that you don't really get a sense of how the people around Cliburn dealt with him. I wouldn't call this a bio; its hyper-focus on Cliburn and Russia means that you don't get a full understanding of what he was like as a person, what his relationship with his mother was like, how he dealt with conflicts between his sexuality (he was gay) and his deep religious beliefs, or really anything else other than his attachment to Russia. That's not really a shortcoming of the book -- the subtitle makes it pretty clear what Cliff wants to focus on in this book -- but it did leave me wanting to know more.