Peter Elyakim Taussig

Toothpicks for Dinner Peter Elyakim Taussig

You'd expect the story of a half-bit classical concert pianist to be as funny as the music he plays. Yet for fifteen years, until he hung up his tails at age forty, the laughs never stopped in Taussig's career, on and off the stage, whether in the backwoods of Canada or eventually in the company of world leaders traveling to exotic locales around the world. The cards were stacked against him when he arrived penniless in a country whose language he did not speak and decided to enroll in music school at the ripe old age of twenty four. Against the odds, with a mixture of barefaced chutzpah and an extra doze of luck, he turned what could have been a dreary slog into a romp as one of Canada's best known musicians and entertainers."In our heart of hearts we all know that life is absurd. Why else would anyone buy life insurance to gamble against it? My life seems to follow an arbitrary plot line over which I exercise minimal control. It remains as absurd and incomprehensible in the retelling as it was while I lived it. What matters more than success is that it is one hell of a good yarn, and I could never keep a good story to myself." [From the Preface]