To Anyone Who Ever Asks

April 1, 2023

Musician, culture writer, and playwright Fishman's (A Star Has Burnt My Eye) extraordinary trek through the life and works of Connie Converse is a laudable endeavor. Born in 1924, Converse, a prodigiously talented singer/songwriter who dropped out of Mount Holyoke College after two years, spent formative time in 1950s Greenwich Village and Harlem, and then disappeared just after Nixon's resignation in 1974. With unfettered access to Converse's family members, friends, and colleagues and the artist's own notebooks and audio recordings, the author constructs an emotional narrative with a bit of sensationalism thrown in. The book also has valuable space devoted to the meaning of her lyrics and the sounds she created as a kind of predecessor of both Jack Kerouac and Bob Dylan, though she lacked their lasting renown. Interesting side excursions, such as why people feel a need to pigeonhole performers of certain types of music and assessments of the political and social milieu, are useful, as are the appendices of her texts and the copious footnotes. VERDICT Although its length is daunting, this tome is welcome. It's an interesting foray into Converse's glimmer of fame and sad subsequent neglect.--Barry Zaslow

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2023
In-depth biography of an obscure midcentury American musician who disappeared in 1974. Early on in his debut book, New Yorker contributor Fishman, a musician himself, memorably describes his first encounter with Connie Converse (b. 1924), when he heard a recording at a party. "Contextually, I couldn't place the song," he writes. "It possessed the openhearted, melodic feel of an old Carter family recording, but there was also some gentle acoustic guitar fingerpicking...and harmonic movement....The traditional elements seemed so finely stitched together, with such a sophisticated sensibility, that the whole sounded absolutely original--modern, even. The song swallowed me. The party froze. The room disappeared." This was the beginning of an evangelical obsession to learn everything about Converse. Over the years, Fishman wrote a play about her and performed her songs in concert, and he spent more than a decade researching and writing this book. The text's power derives as much from the writer's obsession as from Converse's music. He compares her to a host of luminaries, including Bob Dylan, Dinah Shore, Hank Williams, Emily Dickinson, and Jack Kerouac. It's astonishing how much he hears in her and how far he has been willing to go to learn more, whether tracking down folks in their 90s who might have experienced a performance or visiting places where her family lived decades ago. Fishman writes about tapes recorded in her New York kitchen--at a time when it wasn't easy or common to do so--and in other unofficial venues. She never released a record or performed for a paying audience yet somehow made a morning TV appearance with Walter Cronkite. She later quit making music and vanished. Because so little is known about this private woman, Fishman is forced to engage in speculation about her influences, thoughts, and motivations, but his enthusiasm and diligence are infectious. Through the obsession of such dedicated fans as Fishman, Connie Converse will find a larger audience.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

April 17, 2023
Musician Fishman debuts with a rich biography of Elizabeth “Connie” Converse, an outsider folk singer-songwriter who lingered on the fringe of fame before disappearing in 1974 at age 50, four decades before the first official release of her home recordings earned her a cult following. Born in 1924 to conservative Baptist parents, Converse suffered through a restrictive upbringing in Concord, N.H., before moving to New York City in the 1940s, where she ran in a social circle for whom she would play at house parties. Fishman’s perceptive analysis of Converse’s songs illuminates their artistic and autobiographical influences, with the most attention paid to how the sexual liberation implied in such songs as “Roving Woman” may have been inspired by her affairs, contrasting with her reputation as an awkward loner. Fishman’s research is nothing short of remarkable; extensive interviews with friends, family, and coworkers blend with excerpts from Converse’s correspondence to chart her depression after reaching midlife and failing to make a name for herself in Manhattan, and though her fate remains a mystery, letters she sent before she disappeared suggest she either died by suicide or made a new start somewhere. The scrupulous detail sometimes slows the pace, but Fishman succeeds wildly in uncovering the anguish and beauty in Converse’s bewildering story. This should earn Converse some new fans.

Starred review from April 1, 2023
Connie Converse wrote lovely songs that she performed at parties for her circle of New York City friends in the mid-1950s. Her clever narratives were strikingly prescient of a wave of folk music that would hit soon after she abandoned her musical aspirations for a career as an academic editor. The "mystery" of Fishman's title alludes to the fact that, in 1974, Converse vanished without a trace. Fishman--musician, writer, and frequent contributor to the New Yorker--is part of a small but passionate Converse fan base and has recorded her songs, produced an album of her art music, and written a play about her life (A Star Has Burnt My Eye). Now his deeply researched and absorbing biography interweaves the story of her complicated life with his own obsession with her accomplishments and frustrations, some of which mirror his own. His sense of connection adds poignancy to his portrait. "How many more Connie Converses are out there?" he asks, "Marginalized talents waiting to be heard . . . And what price do we pay, as individuals and as a culture, by continuing to use fame, wealth, property and power as our primary metrics for success?" Fishman's book will resonate with Converse devotees and introduce others to this fascinating and overlooked artist.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.