An NYRB Classics Original<br> <br> Just before his death, Sanford Friedman completed this, his final novel, something entirely different from anything he, or for that matter anyone, had written before— <i>Conversations with Beethoven</i>, a moving meditation on greatness and pettiness, vulnerability and genius, that is as elegiac as it is witty and engaging.<br><br>Beethoven compensated for his deafness by having other people write down their questions and comments in a notebook, and in<i> Conversations with Beethoven</i> Friedman dramatizes the last year of Beethoven’s life through these entries. We observe Beethoven primarily through the responses of friends, family, and others to his erratic, profane, even violent outbursts. Friedman paints a vivid portrait of the aging composer, struggling against illness, struggling with his music, and perpetually worried about his wayward ward and nephew, Karl. A delight to read, with a full cast of Dickensian characters ranging from the bibulous hanger-on Holtz, the oleaginous biographer Schindler, and Beethoven’s cheapskate country brother, <i>Conversations with Beethoven</i> slowly deepens to make a profound and memorable music of its own.