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 Mnire'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 readers see their own lives anew.

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9781571311948

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Reviews

Praise for Losing Music I think the hardest thing for a personal writer to do is think well and feel well at the same time. John Cotter's writing is bursting with as much intellect as heart. It's as clear-eyed and incisive as it is moving. It's what nonfiction should be. -Lucas Mann, author of Captive Audience and Lord Fear Losing Music is a fascinating, heartbreaking, deeply personal story from one of the most talented essayists around. It's a book about art and illness, the betrayals of the body, and what is kept and what is lost as time goes by. -Justin Taylor, author of Flights and Riding with the Ghost Devastating and beautiful. Losing Music is pieced together in a particularly uncanny way, like scraps of conversation that gradually coalesce into an immensely powerful and meaningful whole. -Sam Sacks, editor, Wall Street Journal Praise for Under the Small Lights John Cotter's prose is lyric, his images unforgettable, his characters richly complicated. From the first sentence to the last, I was captivated by this story and the characters that call out to the reader with mystery and beauty and terror, like voices in the night. Under the Small Lights is a book to be savored, and John Cotter is an exciting new voice in contemporary fiction. -Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel John Cotter has a way with words. He has a way with dialogue, with setting a scene, with crystallizing description and insight into just a handful of words. He has a way of wrapping his observations about lost generations, about the charade of the Bohemian lifestyle, about the fragility of ideals when they crash into immovable objects, into the characters themselves. . . . Cotter treats these themes with a rare intelligence and subtlety and a certain warmth for these characters who are charming and contemptible by turns. Cotter is going to be a writer to remember, and this is a great book. You should read it. -Tampa Bay (FL) Creative Loafing Under the Small Lights is the kind of book I always look for and rarely find: a mellow meditation on friendship and romance and the romance of friendship told in prose straightforward and lovely. [Cotter's] characters are urbane and articulate, foolishly impulsive, and heartbreakingly earnest. It's been a long time since I've encountered a bildungsroman this successful, let alone a novella this bighearted. -Josh Russell, author of Yellow Jack [Cotter] writes with insight, nuance, and respect for the complexity of these young people's lives. The prose is lyrical and lucid; the scenes are powerful and vivid. -The Rumpus One of the strongest aspects of [Under the Small Lights] is Cotter's ease with natural-sounding dialogue, which sparks, shambles, and darts along-the rhythm of you and your friends goofing on each other. . . . The book also has the substantial advantage of having a great atmospheric beginning, excellent action-packed climax, and a poignant ending. Under the Small Lights is a very good read. -New Pages [Under the Small Lights] moves through a series of scenes that surface like memories, wandering the way our attention spans and affections will, from friend to friend until our rash decisions blast everything away, or until we have to make new friends or risk the inevitable outcome that accompanies emulating / lusting after / emphatically loving your friends ...What might otherwise be construed as a group of selfish kids is instead a group of self-aware kids, who are easier to relate to and easier to love. -Lit Pub

Praise for Losing Music 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 I think the hardest thing for a personal writer to do is think well and feel well at the same time. John Cotter's writing is bursting with as much intellect as heart. It's as clear-eyed and incisive as it is moving. It's what nonfiction should be. -Lucas Mann, author of Captive Audience and Lord Fear Losing Music is a fascinating, heartbreaking, deeply personal story from one of the most talented essayists around. It's a book about art and illness, the betrayals of the body, and what is kept and what is lost as time goes by. -Justin Taylor, author of Flights and Riding with the Ghost Devastating and beautiful. Losing Music is pieced together in a particularly uncanny way, like scraps of conversation that gradually coalesce into an immensely powerful and meaningful whole. -Sam Sacks, editor, Wall Street Journal Praise for Under the Small Lights John Cotter's prose is lyric, his images unforgettable, his characters richly complicated. From the first sentence to the last, I was captivated by this story and the characters that call out to the reader with mystery and beauty and terror, like voices in the night. Under the Small Lights is a book to be savored, and John Cotter is an exciting new voice in contemporary fiction. -Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel John Cotter has a way with words. He has a way with dialogue, with setting a scene, with crystallizing description and insight into just a handful of words. He has a way of wrapping his observations about lost generations, about the charade of the Bohemian lifestyle, about the fragility of ideals when they crash into immovable objects, into the characters themselves. . . . Cotter treats these themes with a rare intelligence and subtlety and a certain warmth for these characters who are charming and contemptible by turns. Cotter is going to be a writer to remember, and this is a great book. You should read it. -Tampa Bay (FL) Creative Loafing Under the Small Lights is the kind of book I always look for and rarely find: a mellow meditation on friendship and romance and the romance of friendship told in prose straightforward and lovely. [Cotter's] characters are urbane and articulate, foolishly impulsive, and heartbreakingly earnest. It's been a long time since I've encountered a bildungsroman this successful, let alone a novella this bighearted. -Josh Russell, author of Yellow Jack [Cotter] writes with insight, nuance, and respect for the complexity of these young people's lives. The prose is lyrical and lucid; the scenes are powerful and vivid. -The Rumpus One of the strongest aspects of [Under the Small Lights] is Cotter's ease with natural-sounding dialogue, which sparks, shambles, and darts along-the rhythm of you and your friends goofing on each other. . . . The book also has the substantial advantage of having a great atmospheric beginning, excellent action-packed climax, and a poignant ending. Under the Small Lights is a very good read. -New Pages [Under the Small Lights] moves through a series of scenes that surface like memories, wandering the way our attention spans and affections will, from friend to friend until our rash decisions blast everything away, or until we have to make new friends or risk the inevitable outcome that accompanies emulating / lusting after / emphatically loving your friends ...What might otherwise be construed as a group of selfish kids is instead a group of self-aware kids, who are easier to relate to and easier to love. -Lit Pub

Author Information

John Cotter is the author of Losing Music. 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 currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

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