Every Good Boy Does Fine: A Love Story in Music Lessons, Denk

[[Description]]In Every Good Boy Does Fine, renowned pianist Jeremy Denk traces an implausible artistic journey. Life is difficult enough as a precocious, temperamental (and possibly insufferable) six-year-old piano prodigy in a small town in New Jersey. But then a family meltdown forces a move to New Mexico, far from classical music’s nerve centers, and Denk has to please a new taskmaster while navigating the perils of junior high school. Escaping to college in Ohio at sixteen, he meets a bewildering cast of music teachers, experiences a series of triumphs and humiliations and ultimately finds his way as one of the world’s greatest living pianists, a MacArthur “Genius” and a frequent performer at Carnegie Hall.There are few writers capable of so deeply illuminating the joys and miseries of artistic practice — the hours of daily repetition, the mystifying early advice and the pressure from parents and teachers who drove him on in the ongoing battle between talent and its two natural en