Sometimes you should read a book just because it is well written.  A book with carefully crafted sentences, with drama in its presentation, with poetry in its rhythm is a book that will take you on a trip you do not expect, to a destination you would not have chosen.

I have just read a book like that and I read it only because I thought it would be well written. I got that feeling about this book when I read the title; “Beethoven’s Hair.”  I was intrigued. How could someone, I wondered, write a whole book about Beethoven’s hair; how much could there be to write about?  But now I was curious, so I did what I usually do when I am browsing in a bookstore and a book catches my attention.  I read the first sentence.

It is my own habit.  I read first sentences of books.  I read first sentences because those sentences give me a feel for how the writer will handle the material, the story that they are about to tell.  Fiction or nonfiction the book is a story.  Nowadays, the distinction between the best fiction and nonfiction piece is the material itself and not so much the style of presentation.  Creative nonfiction is what people are calling nonfiction writing that uses the stylistic elements of writing that used to be typically found in fiction.  Nonfiction writing like that given to us by Kanigel (The Man Who Knew Infinity), Barbara Brown Taylor (The Preaching Life), Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot (Balm In Gilead), Wendell Berry (The Hidden Wound), Stephen L. Carter (Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby) are examples of this creative nonfiction writing. So I read the first sentence of a nonfiction piece the same way I read the first sentence of a fiction piece in order to get a sense of how the writer will handle the story; dryly, complexly, dramatically, poetically, with humor or with mystery.  That’s what I want to know about a book.

So I picked up “Beethoven’s Hair” and read that first sentence.  Then I bought the book and took it home, waiting for a time when I could sit and read this book that I believed would be well written about a topic in which I had no interest.

Simple curiosity and the writing are what kept me going at first.  It was a curious beginning.  At the scene was a Jewish real estate developer, a Mexican-American physician, a forensic anthropologist, a medical examiner, a medical photographer, a notary public, an American news team, a London based film crew, a lock of Ludwig Van Beethoven’s hair and an air of mysterious expectancy.  Intrigued by the title, enticed by that first sentence, I read and kept reading.

Just as I thought it would be, given the first sentence, the writing was smooth, clear, dramatic, and sometimes poetic.  Throughout the writer showed complete control of his craft; he showed care in the construction of the sentence, the building of the paragraph, the putting together of the story.  Those things held me and kept me reading.

I was also helped along by my own interest in music of all types, including classical.  Long ago in my high school education, down home in Louisiana where we black-Creoles created Zydeco music, I was introduced to different kinds of music through a determined music teacher.  Despite the message of racial segregation that said we blacks did not need broad exposure to knowledge, my music teacher had us listen to all kinds of music.  I can see Mrs. Ewell now; dark-skinned, thin, with large eyes, standing at the record player, telling us that we are about to listen to a part of some opera.  I still remember that day in 9^th grade music appreciation class when we listened to Mozart’s Don Giovanni; yikes…  I remember being taught by Mrs. Ewell and playing, for the annual band concert, a piece of music called “Lohengrin.”  I remembered that title because the music was so dramatic; bom, bom ba baaa bump pa rem pa, bom ba raaa… ra.  So when I read the part of “Beethoven’s Hair” that made mention of Beethoven’s friendship with Richard Wagner (pronounced, “Vagg Ner”), the mention of Wagner as the composer of “Lohengrin” caused me to smile and pulled me a little further into the story.

Yet that was only a small help.  As I read further, I was captured by a story about a lock of hair that was a witness to history; musical history, European history, Jewish history, and scientific history. This lock of Beethoven’s hair, clipped and pulled on the day he died by a young protege and admirer, had moved into a family.  It had become a relic of remembrance and motivation for a family in love with music, one member who had known Beethoven, had seen his last days, and had held on to his memory through the lock of hair.  But two hundred years later that lock of hair had turned up in an auction catalog with an unclear path through history.

That was where the story became a mystery.  Where had this lock of hair been before it arrived to be in the Sotheby’s auction catalog?  Trying to answer that question led to a search by the Jewish American real estate agent and the Mexican American physician that spanned the globe.  This was a search that involved historical and investigative research as well as scientific research.  It is a search that took me (as the reader) to the Vienna of the 1700’s, to a history of the growth of the hatred of Jews in Europe that grew over time to put Hitler in charge of Germany and then Europe. A history of heroism of Danish people; a history of the science of the biochemical analysis of hair; and a history of the physical ailments that caused Beethoven to go deaf and that plagued him until he died.

Why was Beethoven so often sick in ways that no one has been able to pin down?  Around this and other questions, Russell Martin weaves a story of admiration for Beethoven’s work, the growth of a friendship between a Jew and a Mexican American, the development of a Beethoven collection at San Jose State University, and biochemistry.  Even the scientific work done is told with clarity and still with dramatic flair. Surprising me as a psychologist, the history of the science used to analyze the lock of Beethoven’s hair touched on behavioral psychology; the biochemistry of deviant behavior. This was a mix of elements that I would never have expected, nor necessarily gone looking for in my personal reading.

It was a reminder to me of an old lesson.  If all of your reading is of books whose topics you already know something about, or that you already have interests in, then you are shortchanging yourself.  Reading is about learning and growing; especially reading that is self-directed, not just reading for a class.

Not really knowing anything about the interests people have had in the source of Beethoven’s illnesses, I found myself wanting to know.  I became more and more interested in the question the more I read because the book is so well written and researched.  I would not have discovered the answer or the history if I had not become curious about the book’s title, and not investigated that first sentence.  That wonderfully controlled sentence that reads,

“Beethoven’s hair, sheltered for nearly two centuries inside a glass locket, was about to become the subject of rapt attention on a warm December morning in 1995.”