Style and Structure Notes Maestro: Year 11

 

Structure and style

 

Typical of a memoir, the text is told in the past tense from the first person narrative perspective, as a middle-aged man recounts his time with Eduard Keller. The title itself points to the centrality of the man in Paul’s conception of his adult self. The fact that Paul goes to such lengths to disparage his early teenage behaviour indicates the extent to which he has matured and grown, and there is a consistent and rueful tone permeating the narrative. Labelling himself as ‘smug, insufferable’ and ‘invulnerable, immensely content’, Paul aims to redress his neglect of Keller through admissions of his flaws as a middle-aged man. Through his confessional voice, we learn that the young Paul is ‘self-satisfied’, ‘a show off’, and that he knows ‘so much for [his] age…and so little’. The unrelenting self-deprecation continues to the last page where Paul admits to his own ignorance; he berates himself for creating in his head ‘a foolish, innocent world, a world of delusion and feeling and ridiculous dreams’. Still, the reader should commend the adult Paul for having the gumption to admit these faults; the book itself becomes the testament to how sorry he really is.

 

Opposites abound in the novel and this structural device is used to expose the shifts that occur to the main character. Paul’s parents fail to fit into Darwin society because their social life consists only of mixing with other families who play music and act. Disparaging Darwin as ‘the arsehole of the earth’, both Paul’s mother and father contrast diametrically from the ‘drunken whistles’ that characterise The Swan’s clientele. Similarly, Adelaide’s predictability, epitomised by ‘rotary clothes hoists and rose beds and apricot trees’ is the antithesis to Darwin’s ‘cartoon world’ with its ‘giant, clockwork insects’. This setting is ripe for Paul’s growth and maturity, a place suitable for expansion of his limited ideas and influences. Rough Stuff, with its leather jackets, rock music and beer-swilling members is the opposite of Paul’s ambition as a concert pianist, but this testing of the boundaries also strikes the reader as an important and necessary part of learning where one belongs during adolescence. In this way, Maestro highlights the debate ‘between the world of the sense and the world of the intellectual’ (as Goldsworthy says of the text in his Introduction). Even Keller himself is a mass of contradictions and opposing forces. While he is a sublime pianist who works unflaggingly to improve his and Paul’s standards, he is also an alcoholic who cannot make sense of the past. Emotion is juxtaposed against intellect in a never-ending battle of motivators that drive human behaviour – an opposition we all have in ourselves, and one that we have to tame.

 

The chapter divisions are also an intentional strategy by Goldsworthy to showcase the changes in Paul, and especially his developing maturity. In “Darwin 1967”, Paul begins as a child who has to be pushed forward to meet Keller. After his initial unusual lesson with the Maestro, Paul wants to stay home and not attend classes again. He is similarly reticent at Darwin High to interact with others, using the Music Room as his ‘lunchtime sanctuary’. Still, his inability to remain quiet leads to Jimmy Papas’ beating of him, and it is this, paradoxically, that teaches him how to manoeuvre in society. The length of this first section of the text suggests the significance of its effect on his adult personality. As the text progresses, the sections become shorter – indicating that Paul is trying to latch onto a past that is quickly disappearing for him.

 

Utilising musical terms, “Intermezzo” is the awakening of his sexual maturity. When Paul realises that the old city of Adelaide has ceased to hold the same attractions he embarks on a treasure hunt to find Keller’s past. While researching in Adelaide University Library, he witnesses a young couple having sex and this ignites his own fantasies.

 

The next section “1968” is largely concerned with his growth sexually and socially. Although Paul utilises Keller’s trademark teaching methods with others, he became ‘increasingly impervious to his criticism’. It is in this section of the text that Paul becomes truly independent, not always with positive results.

 

Only in “Adelaide” can Paul recognise Keller’s selflessness and hidden pain – and it is here that the reader notices Paul’s maturity in recognising others’ troubles.

 

In “Vienna 1975”, Paul meets with Henisch, an old colleague of Keller’s and he hears of how Keller was ‘an artist who had suffered more than any man had a right to suffer’. This small section of the text shows Paul that he had been deluded to believe that he could compete on the world stage; his arrogance and self-satisfaction in Darwin have prevented him from putting in enough effort to reach his goals.

 

The last section also shows how Paul is regretting his poor decisions. Alone, he maintains a vigil by Keller’s bed as he dies; only after this does he suddenly recognise the old man’s worth. Even though he blames Keller for ‘teaching [him] self-criticism that would never allow [him] to forget his limits’, he also becomes a loving husband and father. The ambivalent tone that pervades the end of the text proves Keller’s earlier dogma to Paul, one that we all need to heed to avoid life’s pitfalls: ‘Beauty simplifies…The best music is neither beautiful nor ugly. Like the world [and us], it is infinitely complex’.

 

 

General comments

• A fiction yet written in the style of a memoir. The experiences of young Paul in Darwin

and Vienna are written by adult Paul, who becomes the narrative voice. His comments

often begin and end each short episode and are also woven throughout the narrative.

His comments routinely condemn the attitudes and behaviour of his younger self as

well as guide the reader reaction to events and characters, for example after describing

Keller and his first bizarre music lesson adult Paul says, ‘I find it hard to understand

how much I came to love the man, to depend on him’ (p. 13).

At the start, the comments of adult Paul firmly establishes the memoir style and

conveys a sense of immediacy for the reader, that the writing is being constructed

almost at the same time as we read it. ‘Sitting here, setting down these first memories

of Keller.‘ (p.13)

The voice of adult Paul also comments on the conventions of writing itself. For

example, ‘To describe the world is always to simplify its textures, to coarsen the weave:

to lose the particular in the general. But as I sit here writing the events of my childhood

seem to fall neatly into patterns.’ (p. 15)

• A Bildungsroman, a novelistic form which concentrates on the spiritual, moral,

psychological, or social development and growth of the protagonist usually from

childhood to maturity. (Wikipaedia reference)

• The epigram. The epigram is meant to focus reader attention to the central idea of the

narrative. The relationship between Paul and Keller indicates that the epigram is meant

to be read ironically. There are in fact many similarities between Austria in the 1930s

and Australia in the 1960s.

• The narrative is built like a piece of music. The narrative is episodic with different

movements akin to an extended piece of music. Each short episode is ended by a

diamond and line denoting a change of scene, time or central idea. This compliments

the symbolism of music that runs through the novel and the use of musical analogy to

represent relationships and the significance of events and themes.

Setting

• Vivid images: The Swan Hotel (p. 3), weather imagery to describe drinkers in the front

bar, the religious imagery used to describe their drinking, Darwin (pp. 9-10, p. 46).

• Character’s opinions: Father’s opinion; ‘Darwin was the terminus. A town populated by

men who had run as far as they could flee. From here there was only one further

escape’ (p. 17). Paul’s mother’s clichéd references to Vienna (p. 45) and Keller’s

cynical painful references (p. 45).

• Comparisons: Darwin is compared to a detention centre.

•

The use of capitalised tags. This device renders the phrases into a definition rather

than a description. Vienna is ‘The Ballroom of Europe’, ‘The Experimental laboratory

for the End of the World’.