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    Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir
    Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir
    Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir
    Audiobook8 hours

    Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir

    Written by Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman

    Narrated by Elizabeth Wiley

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A young woman leaves Appalachia for life as a classical musician-or so she thinks.

    When aspiring violinist Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman lands a job with a professional ensemble in New York City, she imagines she has achieved her lifelong dream. But the ensemble proves to be a sham. When the group "performs," the microphones are never on. Instead, the music blares from a CD. The mastermind behind this scheme is a peculiar and mysterious figure known as The Composer, who is gaslighting his audiences with music that sounds suspiciously like the Titanic movie soundtrack. On tour with his chaotic ensemble, Hindman spirals into crises of identity and disillusionment as she "plays" for audiences genuinely moved by the performance, unable to differentiate real from fake.

    Sounds Like Titanic is a surreal, often hilarious coming-of-age story. Hindman writes with precise, candid prose and sharp insight into ambition and gender, especially when it comes to the difficulties young women face in a world that views them as silly, shallow, and stupid. As the story swells to a crescendo, it gives voice to the anxieties and illusions of a generation of women, and reveals the failed promises of a nation that takes comfort in false realities.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateFeb 12, 2019
    ISBN9781684418763
    Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir

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    Reviews for Sounds Like Titanic

    4/5

    80 ratings14 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman may have been a mediocre violinist, but she’s a heck of a writer. In Sounds Like Titanic, she creates a multi-leveled metaphor in which a movie – an artificial contrivance largely about class differences – reflects a contemporary American life in which audiences clamor to listen to “concerts” in which the musicians stand before dead mikes, pretending to play saccharine but soothing musical pap.The metaphor is fresh and effective and telling, echoing the experience of the haves and have-nots of her youth – the blue-collar Appalachian kids who were siphoned off into the chicken processing plants or Uncle Sam’s Army, versus the super-rich kids she rubbed elbows with at Columbia; then loops around to make the point that audiences clamored to “hear” fake concerts of music purposely designed to sound like the Titanic sound track – fake “music” fake-played by real musicians, and wraps it up with a comparison to the faking-it behavior young women learn in order to survive in a world that tells them they are not pretty enough, not thin enough, not worthy enough in and of themselves to be accepted as something of value. That difference between value and popularity, between real and fake, permeates the world she examines.Not everyone is going to be comfortable with the structure, which slides around loosely in time, jumping back and forth in Hindman’s life, or with her on-again, off-again use of the second person narrative. And some will get hung up on the choices she makes – starting with choosing a totally unsuitable college based purely on the desire to attend the same institution as her high-school boyfriend.The relationship, unsurprisingly, doesn’t last, and Hindman rapidly finds herself in over her head – musically, as she discovers that despite her love for the violin, she will never have what it takes to be a professional musician; financially, as she struggles to make tuition and living expense in a milieu where most of her classmates are one-percenters; and scholastically as she piles on classes in an attempt to get her degree in three years while at the same time working insane hours to make the money to get the degree to get the job to make the money – an endless merry-go-round that ultimately lands her in the fake-music business.And all this is happening against the background of 90s feminism and the Iraq war, and within a stratified culture, fake-playing homogenized music that sounds “just like a movie about an entire society – rich on the top deck, poor on the bottom – headed for disaster.” There’s a whole lot going on in this deceptively slim volume, and while one can be appalled at some of Hindman’s choices, one can also relish her journey to self-realization.
    • 3/5
      When reading Sounds Like Titanic there are two things you must quickly accept. First, you will never learn the identity of "The Composer" who led the author in her "Milli Violini" tours around the country where audiences heard a CD rather than the musicians themselves. Second, the memoir is written largely in second person. The reasons for these decisions are set out clearly early on, but I still had a struggle with this book that nagged me throughout. Despite being told that these were the decisions, carefully made, by the author, I felt like they were distancing mechanisms. I only ever felt in conversation with this book to put my finger on why scenes that I should be lapping up weren't hitting the mark for me. Nevertheless, my searching to connect with the book kept me engaged throughout. BUT the minute I put it down I googled who The Composer might be, and I'm not sure if that was an intended consequence or not, if I'm supposed to see to the symbolism when I want specifics.
    • 5/5
      The author spent a number of years playing the violin live at fairs etc. to help a man she identifies only as The Composer sell CDs—but her mike was low/off, and the audience heard only the perfect recordings. It’s a really interesting memoir of loving music, not being very good at it, struggling financially in NYC, workaholism, the conflict between patriarchy’s version of femininity and competence, developing anxiety, and failing to get a job as a Middle East affairs reporter, which is what she really wanted to do. She’s not wrong that Americans would rather read about Milli Violini than learn about the region where we are still, again, mired in war. I have to admit, though, that when she describes middle-aged white guys at the NYT telling her that they were hiring local reporters for that, I thought that was probably the right call—but then again, look who gets to decide to do that, and I bet that a white American dude who graduated from Columbia could impress them enough to get that job.
    • 4/5
      I received a free copy of the audio book version of this book, from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program, in exchange for an honest review. In general, I loved this book. I appreciated that the reader had a regional accent that, as far as I could determine, stood in well for the author's. The book was a fascinating peek into the music performance world (at least, certain facets of it). I enjoyed the descriptions of the author's early development as a musician, her family's support of her lessons, and what inspired her study. And the interactions and relationships between the touring/performing groups was interesting and engaging. My only gripe was the too frequent assurances that she really wasn't good enough to be a professional musician. A lighter touch here would have been nice; just over-emphasized that point too often. A fun read.
    • 4/5
      Memoir of The Author's time spent in Tim Janis's ensemble, pretending to play borderline plagiarized music. Rather than maddening (why is America filled with people who like this kind of music? how did Janis get away with it? etc.) the book is pleasantly absurd thanks to The Author's funny, clever prose.
    • 4/5
      Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman uses her four-year experience as a fake violinist in a fake touring ensemble to explore the larger question of Americans’ inability to distinguish between what is real and what is fake. Her story illustrates just how easy it is to create a false impression when a gullible society derives comfort from embracing fantasies. Indeed, the problem of dissembling pervades her coming-of-age memoir. She suggests that it may have started following 9/11 when Americans were falsely led to believe that they were in mortal danger from Iraq’s stockpiling of nuclear weapons. However, the acceptance of fakery goes back a long way in America. Consider the false interpretation of much of its own history and the embrace of so many obvious fakes like Barnum, Cody, and Custer. Her narrative offers numerous examples including chain restaurants with fake themes, reality TV, and the inclusion of terms like “gaslighting” and “fake news” in the lexicon. All of this continues to be relevant today when an obvious grifter, who sees reality as fungible, becomes the president.Hindman uses her experience with illusion to offer insights into issues like gender, work, class, music, and neurosis. She explores her own experience growing up in Appalachia to shine a light on how young girls learn how our culture uses their bodies to objectify them. She invokes Naomi Wolf’s phrase, “life in the body” (“The Beauty Myth”) to emphasize her own experience. Early on, she learned of the importance of hard work to increase feelings of worth. This belief took its toll as an undergraduate at Columbia when there never was enough money to cover tuition and living expenses. Instead, she came to realize that her well-to-do peers viewed her as poor. As the daughter of two professionals, this idea seemed odd to her. She also viewed as strange the lack of interest in her obvious expertise for work as a Middle East correspondent following 9/11.Hindman’s ideas about music are central to her narrative. Audiences were seeking comforting music that was stolen from a Hollywood movie about another tragedy (the sinking of the Titanic) to take their minds off current tragedies of war and terrorism. Her job playing this genre seemed to give her the cache that she sought as a child taking violin lessons but failed to achieve as an adult. She knew that playing the violin made up for feelings of inadequacy that hard work would not resolve. She points out that playing the violin is a common symbol for intelligence. Russell Crowe was imbued with this when he fake-played the violin in “Master and Commander.” Clearly, one of the most moving and poignant scenes in the memoir was her strong sense of accomplishment from playing a difficult violin piece at a high school assembly.Hindman attributes her panic attacks to her stint as a fake violinist. “I realized that mental illness is losing your sense of what is real and what is fake.” This, along with overwork, led to exhaustion and abuse of artificial stimulants.The unnamed “composer” plays a central role in what she comes to understand as the central role fakery plays in life. This man was clearly peculiar and deeply flawed. Nevertheless, she notes his many admirable qualities. He shamelessly ripped off the music from “Titanic,” but had no interest in actually playing it before an audience. Instead he blasted it from large speakers using a cheap CD player he bought from Walmart. He never learned Jessica’s first name; was unaware of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony; and did not know who John Kerry was. Dissembling happiness, he had a manic grin reminiscent of a raptor and demanded that his fake musicians do the same. All of this was delicately balanced by truly important philanthropies, especially to NPR and habits of genuine kindness to his audiences. “There are people out there with cancer,” he admonishes his musicians.The writing is generally lucid, humorous and often moving. Much of the narrative is written in the second person, which gives it a sense of distance but seems to permit too many negative American stereotypes and to dismiss her own shortcomings, especially the fakery. “You have spent years working hard under the belief that hard work matters, but you are suddenly struck by the idea that nothing you do matters — because everything is fake.”The memoir covers a lot of ground while maintaining interest with a nonlinear timeline. Yet it seems strangely silent about many of Hindman’s motivations and her current life as an academician back in Appalachia.
    • 4/5
      I knew almost nothing before starting this (including the fact that it was a memoir), but found the audiobook completely captivating. The author moves backward and forward in time from the age of five when she first decided she wanted to play the violin, through her year abroad when she thought she would become a war correspondent, and central to the story, her years pretending to play classical music on stage for “the composer.” There are many laugh-out-loud moments throughout, but even more important are the things she learns about herself and our country in a post 9-11 world. Well worth a listen.
    • 1/5
      Abandoned. I expected to enjoy this more than I did. I got tired of listening to the out of order and repetitious ramblings about the author's experience playing for "the composer's" orchestral ensemble. The audience heard a recording instead of the live musicians. The music sounds similar to the Titanic soundtrack. She saw the gig as a rescue from working two jobs to try to make ends meet. I made it half-way through the second CD, but it just never picked up for me. An article published in New York Magazine speculates Tim Janis is the unidentified composer. I received audio CDs through LibraryThing Early Reviewers program in exchange for an honest review.
    • 4/5
      The first half of this memoir is absolutely hilarious in a very original manner. Bogs down a bit in the second half but still worth listening to as one of the quirkiest stories ever.
    • 5/5
      In the early 2000s, Jessica Hindman was a college student struggling to pay for tuition at Columbia. Her parents, back in Appalachia, had never even heard of Columbia and didn’t understand her passion to attend despite the ridiculous cost. Then, she gets the opportunity of her dreams: she’s hired as a professional violinist as part of the ensemble for The Composer playing for audiences across the country. The music is new-age cheese and not too demanding, and despite her self-professed mediocre skills (I believe she must have more talent than she admits), she perseveres. Of course she can ─ the mics are never turned on. Through countless PBS specials and performances, the Composer plays a pre-recorded professional CD through speakers instead of allowing the live musicians to be heard. The audience has no idea. Although a cursory Internet search will give names to the thinly-veiled characters, she refers to her boss only as The Composer. He’s presented ambivalently. He sincerely cares about his fans and is sympathetic to their problems, but he’s also a bit manic and possibly skirts the border of fraud with the fake performances. I loved this memoir. It’s chock full of relatable experiences to anyone who’s ever suffered from self-doubt, misplaced ambition, or imposter syndrome. Jessica’s story is as genuine as it is unusual, and her succinct telling in the second person drew me in. Jessica reassures you that it’s okay to not be okay. This is the story of a college girl adrift. Jessica captures the struggle between dreams and harsh reality, and the suffering endured by all aspiring 20-somethings of the dichotomy of bursting enthusiasm and zero experience. The audiobook was well done, read by Elizabeth Wiley, whose drawl was a bit syrupy at times. I kept picturing Julia Sugarbaker from “Designing Women” instead of a young college student. Her narration, however, was engaging, and she voiced the numerous characters with skill. Many thanks to LibraryThing, HighBridge audio, and W. W. Norton and Company for this audiobook in exchange for my review.
    • 2/5
      Somewhat entertaining for the amusing anecdotes, but overall just another of the "poor me" memoirs that are popular lately. Child of a two parent, professional household, private violin lessons, graduates high school, applies and is accepted at an ivy league college, but parents can't or won't foot the entire bill. Has to work at a number of low-paying jobs to survive, but somehow manages a year of study abroad. Does drugs to keep up with the hectic schedule, but quits voluntarily after a few months. Perhaps the most telling line in the memoir is from a conversation with a friend regarding the book, "We can check those things off our list for elements needed in books". The author may have something profound to say, but not here. The identity of "The Composer" is not revealed although the book is laced with clues. (My guess is Tim Janis)
    • 5/5
      Unable to afford the tuition at her pricey Ivy League university, Appalachia native Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman embarks upon a variety of money-making ventures, including a job pretending to play the violin in a hugely successful, but fake, orchestra. This ensemble, led by a mysterious figure Hindman calls The Composer, successfully tours the United States and sells thousands of dollars worth of CDs at each weekend show. The Composer's emotionally-stirring music sounds a lot like the Titanic movie soundtrack. According to Hindman, most of the audience doesn't realize that the "performed" music is not really live.Sounds Like Titanic is both a memoir of the author's coming of age and a meditation on the beginnings of our reality-challenged times. If you are tempted to feel nostalgic for the late 1990s-early 2000s, this book will quickly disabuse you from that notion. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      Fake it until you make it is the premise of this book. This is an inside look at a musical group that made a living for four years in the equivalent of a lip-syncing orchestra. The memoir covers the period when a 21-year-old aspiring violinist landed a position to play for a well-known orchestra. The writing is clever and a thought provoking look at the thin line between reality and perception. This is the author’s first novel.
    • 4/5
      So bizarre. I do not know how else to describe this. A nice mix of coming of age from Appalachia to New York with a twilight zone like venture into being a professional musician. If playing, but not really playing counts? You have to read it to believe it! Now we just have to figure out who this Composer really is...