Category: FICTION
Guide Created By: Lorrie Gorg
Discussion Leader(s): Lorrie Gorg
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Guide Description

Plot Synopsis

"The sublime arrogance of the British colonial system is symbolised by the central conceit of Mason's accomplished first novel, in which an Erard grand piano is transported from late-Victorian London to a Burmese outpost, at the behest of Anthony Carroll, an eccentric army doctor intent on bringing about a rapprochement between warring tribes through the "civilizing" power of music.

"The novel opens with the departure for Burma of Edgar Drake, the piano tuner Carroll has requested to repair the damage caused to the instrument by the inclement climate. Edgar, an innocent who has never been out of England, is flattered by the commission and intrigued by everything he hears about the maverick Carroll. Only when it is too late to turn back has he cause to regret his eagerness, discovering that he has become a pawn in a dangerous political game."
From the London Times...........by Christina Koni

Other Background Information

Interview with the author, Read Magazine

Bold Type Magazine

Questions

1. The Piano Tuner participates in a tradition of literary works that try to fathom colonized cultures vastly different from the author's own. What features does Daniel Mason's novel share with such predecessors as E. M. Forster's A Passage to India, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, or George Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant"? How is it different from these works?

2. In briefing Edgar Drake about Anthony Carroll, Colonel Killian tells Edgar that "there are men who get lost in the rhetoric of our imperial destiny, that we conquer not to gain land and wealth but to spread culture and civilization" (p. 18). Is this true of Carroll? Is he motivated to spread Western culture, via music, to the East? Is it true of Edgar?

3. What does the novel as a whole suggest about the purpose of imperialism?

4. Why does Edgar decide to accept a mission to travel thousands of miles to tune a piano in a remote and dangerous jungle at the furthest outreaches of the British Empire? Why does his wife, Katherine, encourage him to go?

5. Why is Anthony Carroll viewed with such a mixture of reverence and suspicion by the British military? In what ways does his behavior defy convention?

6.As he contemplates his voyage to Burma, Edgar views London on a foggy night: "he could see the vague line of the shore, the vast, heavy architecture that crowded the river. Like animals at a waterhole, he thought, and he liked the comparison" (p. 23). Why is this a particularly apt simile for Edgar to use at this moment? Where else in the novel does Mason reveal the depth of Edgar’’’’s consciousness through his impressions?

7. Edgar writes to Katherine that the "entire trip has already coated itself in a veneer of seeming, a dream likeness" (p. 146). In what ways is this true? What gives Edgar's experiences an otherworldly quality? What role do his dreams play in the novel?

8. During the tiger hunt, Captain Witherspoon spots some egrets and asks if he can shoot them. "Not here," Captain Dalton tells him. "The egrets are part of the founding myths of Pegu. Bad luck to shoot them, my friend." To which Witherspoon replies, "Superstitious nonsense. . . . I thought we were educating them to abandon such beliefs" (p. 94). What does this exchange suggest about the British attitude toward colonial subjects in Burma? About the cultural differences between the British and Burmese?

9. What is the significance of the one boy to whom Edgar gives a coin being accidentally shot by Captain Witherspoon? Why does Edgar refer to the coin as "a symbol of responsibility, of misplaced munificence, a reminder of mistakes, and so a talisman" (p. 104)? In what sense does Edgar inherit the boy's "fortune"

10. In what ways is Edgar perfectly suited to the task set for him by Anthony Carroll? How do his dreaminess, his propensity for getting lost, his clumsiness, and his political na••vet? all serve Carroll''s ends?

11. After he''s been away from London for several months, Edgar writes to Katherine that he has changed, although, he admits ""What this change means I don''t know, just as I don''t know if I am happier or sadder than I have ever been."" He also says, ""There is a purpose in all of this . . . although I do not know what it is"" (p. 252). How has Edgar changed? What has changed him? What is his real purpose in Burma?

12. What kind of woman is Khin Myo? Is her attraction to Edgar real or feigned? What is her relationship to Anthony Carroll? How is she related to the woman with the parasol at the beginning and end of the story? Is she, as Nash-Burnham suggests in the ghostly conversation in the guardhouse, Edgar''s ""creation,"" a part of his ""imaginings"" (p.302)?

13. Music occurs throughout The Piano Tuner, from the hauntingly beautiful song the Man with One Story hears in the desert, to the love ditty Anthony Carroll plays on a flute to fend off attackers in the jungle, to the Bach fugue Edgar plays for the sawbwa, to the call of insects scraping their wings in the jungle. What roles does music play in the novel? How does it affect its hearers? What is its ultimate importance in the story?

14. After Edgar escapes from the guardhouse, he reads the note that Carroll had given him––a passage from his translation of The Odyssey about the Lotus-Eaters who ""forget the way home"" (p. 310). In what ways has Edgar ""tasted"" of the lotus? Why does he find Burma so alluring? What does the lotus signify in this context?

15. Why does Edgar cut the piano loose from its moorings and send it down the Salween River in a rainstorm? In what ways is this striking image––a grand piano floating downriver on an unmanned raft and being ""played"" by the rain––suggestive of the novel''s larger themes?

16. What accounts for The Piano Tuner''s elusive, hard-to-pin-down quality? What remains mysterious after the book is finished? How does Mason''s prose style contribute to the sense of ambiguity that pervades the novel?

17. At the end of the novel, Captain Nash-Burnham tells Edgar that Anthony Carroll is a traitor to England and suggests a number of possible roles for the Doctor: ""Anthony Carroll is an agent working for Russia, He is a Shan nationalist, He is a French spy, Anthony Carroll wants to build his own kingdom in the jungles of A Burma"" (p. 301).

18. Edgar thinks Carroll is a genius and a peacemaker. Which of these interpretations seems most likely? Is it possible to know from the evidence in the novel?

19. Why does Mason begin and end the novel with the image of the sun and a parasol? What symbolic or cultural values might attach to this image?

20. What does the novel as a whole suggest about the British Empire––its effects on colonized peoples and on those who try to rule them––in the late nineteenth century? In what ways is this historical portrait relevant to our own time and the political and cultural conflicts between the West and the Middle East?
Discussion questions provided courtesy of Knopf.

Quotes by our Participants

“I finally had time to begin reading and now I am hooked. To me the sign of a good book is I have no desire to skip to the end and see how it turns out. SO THIS IS A GOOD BOOK. It makes me want to savor it.I feel as if I am listening to the "hero" tell his story and to use an old cliche I WAIT WITH BATED BREATH>”...................... annafair

“This is a wonderful book. It is composed in the same way a piece of music is composed. There is careful consideration to the flow of words and how different voices blend together. One almost needs to listen to this book (I do not mean get an audio version). “ .......georgehd

“there is an interview with the author Daniel Mason, in which he is asked where he got the idea of writing about piano tuners. His reply, I thought, was beautifully written: "As I wrote, I became more and more fascinated by piano tuning. While at first I thought of it as a relatively mechanical task, the more I wrote and the more tuners I interacted with, the more I realized that the act of tuning a piano is really quite sublime. A composer provides a song, a pianist the motor activity, and the piano the mechanics, but the tuner is one whose work transforms human motives and construction into beautiful sound. The idea of a broken piano is tragic, imagine the beauty in taking a contraption of metal and wood and strings and transforming it into something that can bring us Beethoven."....................Lorrie

Interesting Information

All about Burma

All about Erard pianos