Overview

""I was in the car the first time music seemed strange: the instruments less distinct, the vocals less crisp."" John Cotter was thirty years old when he first began to notice a ringing in his ears. Soon the ringing became a roar inside his head. Next came partial deafness, then dizziness and vertigo that rendered him unable to walk, work, sleep, or even communicate. At a stage of life when he expected to be emerging fully into adulthood, teaching, and writing books, he found himself ""crippled and dependent"" and in search of care. When he is first told that his debilitating condition is likely Ménière's Disease, but that there is ""no reliable test, no reliable treatment, and no consensus on its cause,"" Cotter quits teaching, stops writing, and commences upon a series of visits to doctors and treatment centers. What begins as an expedition across the country navigating and battling the limits of the American healthcare system quickly becomes something else entirely: a journey through hopelessness and adaptation to disability. Along the way, hearing aids become inseparable from his sense of self, as does a growing understanding that the possibilities in his life are narrowing rather than expanding. And with this understanding of his own travails comes reflection on age-old questions around fate, coincidence, and making meaning of inexplicable misfortune. A devastating memoir that sheds urgent, bracingly honest light on both the taboos surrounding disability and the limits of medical science, Losing Music is refreshingly vulnerable and singularly illuminating―a story that will make listeners see their own lives anew.

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9781665034371

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Reviews

Losing Music is a stunning, expansively beautiful book. Not just because of John Cotter's precise and vivid language on a sentence level, but also because of how it moves so tenderly through the vanishing of sound, and not just sound, but songs--points of connection that can be taken for granted. And even beyond this reality, Losing Music is not solely a sad book. It is also a book of comforts, of joys, of closeness. I am thankful for all of its movements. -- Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance Losing Music is a vertiginous journey of loss and discovery triggered by the onset of an unpredictable and mysterious disability. With poetic energy, John Cotter describes the roaring and swirling particulars of Meniere's disease, while he grapples with universal questions of meaning and suffering. The memoir effortlessly blends personal stories with delightful deep dives into sound dynamics, inner-ear anatomy, and eighteenth-century author Jonathan Swift, who becomes a much needed friend--'articulate, accessible, free with his time, ' and, I might add, darkly funny, dramatic, and brilliant, not unlike Cotter himself. -- M. Leona Godin, author of There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness A stunning, expansively beautiful book. A book of comforts, of joys, of closeness. -- Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance I'm not sure what I'd do if my body became a seemingly unsolvable mystery, and I can't know how I'd handle the fear, frustration, and despair, but I doubt I'd have either the fortitude or the imagination to do what John Cotter has achieved in this book. Losing Music is a remarkable memoir: unsettling, insightful, and gorgeously written. I'll be pressing this book into many people's hands. -- Maggie Smith, author of Goldenrod: Poems John Cotter brings sound to the page as something tactile: abrasive, elusive, fluid, textured, a current between body and mind. He fashions language into a velvety pocket in a harsh world. Losing Music is a phenomenal book about what it's like to be sick and suffering, and in it, I recognize not only the isolating nature of illness, but also a powerful intimacy with one's own changing self. -- Elissa Washuta, author of White Magic: Essays

"""Losing Music is a stunning, expansively beautiful book. Not just because of John Cotter's precise and vivid language on a sentence level, but also because of how it moves so tenderly through the vanishing of sound, and not just sound, but songs--points of connection that can be taken for granted. And even beyond this reality, Losing Music is not solely a sad book. It is also a book of comforts, of joys, of closeness. I am thankful for all of its movements."" -- ""Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance"" ""Losing Music is a vertiginous journey of loss and discovery triggered by the onset of an unpredictable and mysterious disability. With poetic energy, John Cotter describes the roaring and swirling particulars of Ménière's disease, while he grapples with universal questions of meaning and suffering. The memoir effortlessly blends personal stories with delightful deep dives into sound dynamics, inner-ear anatomy, and eighteenth-century author Jonathan Swift, who becomes a much needed friend--'articulate, accessible, free with his time, ' and, I might add, darkly funny, dramatic, and brilliant, not unlike Cotter himself."" -- ""M. Leona Godin, author of There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness"" ""A stunning, expansively beautiful book. A book of comforts, of joys, of closeness."" -- ""Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance"" ""I'm not sure what I'd do if my body became a seemingly unsolvable mystery, and I can't know how I'd handle the fear, frustration, and despair, but I doubt I'd have either the fortitude or the imagination to do what John Cotter has achieved in this book. Losing Music is a remarkable memoir: unsettling, insightful, and gorgeously written. I'll be pressing this book into many people's hands."" -- ""Maggie Smith, author of Goldenrod: Poems"" ""John Cotter brings sound to the page as something tactile: abrasive, elusive, fluid, textured, a current between body and mind. He fashions language into a velvety pocket in a harsh world. Losing Music is a phenomenal book about what it's like to be sick and suffering, and in it, I recognize not only the isolating nature of illness, but also a powerful intimacy with one's own changing self. "" -- ""Elissa Washuta, author of White Magic: Essays"""

Author Information

John Cotter is the author of Under the Small Lights. He has contributed essays, theater pieces, and fiction to New England Review, Raritan, Georgia Review, Guernica, Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, Joyland, Commonweal, and elsewhere. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island. John Cotter is the author of Under the Small Lights. He has contributed essays, theater pieces, and fiction to New England Review, Raritan, Georgia Review, Guernica, Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, Joyland, Commonweal, and elsewhere. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

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