Customer Reviews

But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz

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Picture this: "Onstage at Birdland, eyes shut, one arm hanging at his side....trumpet raised to his lips like a brandy bottle--not playing the horn but swigging from it, sipping it."

Geoff Dyer's employs his exquisite imagery as a starting point for his "imaginative criticism" of the celebrated and tragic lives of several iconic jazz musicians (including figures such as Chet Baker, Lester Young, Thelonious Monk, Ben Webster, Charles Mingus, and Bud Powell). While photographs are the inspiration, Dyer's writing is so precise and sensual that he need only describe the photographs (the book has only one small photo). And this is just right for a book about music, his writing is so lyrical that we almost hear the sounds while reading. (In fact. the least effective aspect of the book is the Duke Ellington "road trip" that introduces each chapter, perhaps because the narrative is not connected to any particular Ellington sound.)

Many of the scenes and dialogue (especially the inner dialogue) are necessarily fictions, "assume that what's here has been invented or altered rather than quoted." But Dyer's explains that while his version may veer from the truth, "it keeps faith with the improvisational prerogatives of the form." He mixes truth and fiction into portraits that illuminate what strictly factual history cannot always convey. (Think of Robert Graves' in his WWI memoir/fiction "Goodbye to All That."). Dyer explains that while a photo depicts only a "split second," its "felt duration" may include the unseen moments before and after that split second. "But Beautiful" invites us to improvise (as Dyer does) into that unseen time, and discover our own subjective relationship to the music.

Listen to this: "Chet put nothing of himself into his music and that's what lent his playing its pathos...Every time he played a note he waved it goodbye. Sometimes he didn't even wave."

The evocative word pictures are unusually perceptive and sensitive. Although personal and often imagined, it's really like an improvised solo that either feels "right" or not. I think "But Beautiful" hits the right notes and rhythms: his words evoke the music, and, after reading it, the music will evoke the words. Not without its flaws, it is still an astonishing feat.

This work, along with James Baldwin's short story, "Sonny's Blues," is as good as any I've read about the jazz life, its creators and innovators, and the high cost of such terrible beauty. I had the advantage of being present while Lester was lost on stage in an alcoholic stupor; Monk was dancing around the piano, knocking over cymbals, rather than playing the instrument; Chet Baker, unable to stand, was expending his last breaths on "The Thrill Is Gone"; and Duke was waiting for Harry Carney to swing by with the car to chauffeur him through the wintry night from Kenosha, Wisconsin to Kansas City. But how a young writer like Dyer managed to capture these moments before his time, freezing them unforgettably in a literary living moment, I can't imagine.

Dyer knows that the foremost responsibility of a music critic is not to critique but to verbalize his non-verbal subject, bringing it to life for the reader. He does so admirably, creating believable, recognizable, fascinating portraits in unlabored, unpretentious prose.

His portraits of the artist ring completely true to the ears of this fellow observer--penetrating glimpses of the creative child trapped in a man's body now reduced to fighting a losing battle against physical and mental entropy. Yet his faith in the living tradition of jazz is refreshing, as is his characterization of the jazz musician's struggle as a valiant contest with the precursor, not unlike that of the strong poet's.

Though there's an elegaic tone throughout the book, it's never ponderous or depressing. In fact, its human portraits are more likely to interest newcomers than the many text books that catalog styles and names.

This is not to say the book is without shortcomings. The author is much better at capturing the musicians for us than their music. And his appreciation and understanding of Duke Ellington's music seems somewhat limited. Too bad he didn't give at least as much attention to the colorful cast of characters on the band bus as to the private conveyance preferred by Duke.

Yet any listener who has the slightest interest in jazz and its makers simply cannot afford to pass this one up. And it goes a long way toward fleshing out some of the caricatures served up on the Ken Burns' television series.

Geoff Dyer's But Beautiful: A Book about Jazz is much more than an extended critical essay on a still-evolving, vital musical genre and a great deal more than fictional portrayals of Jazz legends. Here, Dyer focuses his considerable talents on creating a kind of Jazz-in-print, seeking to emulate the frenzied riffing, explosive spontaneity and creative interplay, which has given Jazz music so much more vitality than many other genres' created in the 20th century. Without question, one would have to agree that he has succeeded, totally to the readers' enrichment.

But Beautiful hits the reader on several levels; we are taken on a series of journeys into the lives, thoughts, conversations and seminal events of eight Jazz musicians. Between each chapter is inserted a fictional, road-tripping almost ghostly presence of Duke Ellington, a father figure of modern Jazz who may well have known, recorded and very likely influenced all eight men whom Dyer chose to write/riff about. What's real about the eight musicians are the bare-bones facts known to many Jazz fans; Lester Young court-martialed by the Army because of an inability to cope with a racist Drill Sergeant, Chet Baker's teeth knocked out by an angry drug dealer in a seedy, San Francisco diner, Art Pepper sentenced to five years in prison on a Heroin possession conviction and so on. What's possible, and perhaps no less real to the reader are the details of their lives, their anguish and the self-destructive passions which attend the day to day living of so many creative people. Dyer draws these details in part through listening to the music and inspiration gained by looking at photographs of some of the musicians. 'Not as they were but as they appear to me....' Dyer asks the reader to see the musicians as he sees them, to believe in the memory of what these photos inspired. The men and their lives are portrayed, much like Jazz itself, with a kind of heart-stopping intensity and a poignant, empathetic acknowledgement of lives spent creating and being swallowed whole by the gift that makes creation possible. On Thelonious Monk; "Whatever it was inside him was very delicate, he had to keep it very still, slow himself right down so that nothing affected it." On Ben Webster; "He carried his loneliness around with him like an instrument case. It never left his side."

Very little, insightful criticism or critical essays have been produced regarding Jazz and the people who play it and live it. Dyer has done more than write mere history or criticism in But Beautiful, he has written (and played) a genre-exploding, lyrical meditation on Jazz and on the terrifying, exhilarating possibilities of the music itself and what ought to be recognized as a new form of fictional riffing.

If you ever loved a jazz tune, you will love these pages. Not for anything else but for beauty in the art itself. Sobering, BUT BEAUTIFUL.

Dyer has the rare ability to make the reader feel like he is participating in these lives while simulataneously observing them. The idea behind this book (short, fictional accounts of the lives of several different jazz musicians) is fraught with peril: it could have very easily been done poorly. It is to Dyer's credit that the book succeeds as well as it does. The author's essay at the end of the book on jazz, modern and past, is also well worth reading.

In But Beautiful the reader is exposed to the greats of jazz through several well written vignetts. The writing just beautiful. With a delicate and often intimate style, Geoff Dyer tells the tales of jazz legends in a perspective unique to each artist. Mean while the author weaves the story of Duke Elinton driving across the country side. This element is used ingeneously to bind the radically different vingetts that make up the solos of this books song. But Beautiful is just that, a song not just about jazz, but of it

This book captures the essence of jazz. Every nuance from languid to livid, sad to sublime is etched out by Dyer's poetic and harmonious flow of prose. If you are familiar with these artists, his stories encourage you to say, put on your favorite album by Monk while you read about him -- or after you read about him, so you can reflect on how the writer has connected with the soul of the music. If you aren't familiar with the artists, this work will definitely urge you to acquire some of their music. This book is simply an extended poem, traced so delicately that it allows the experienced and the novice alike, the opportunity to peer through a window and into the soul of Jazz.

I have purchased this book at least six times. I reread it each year to savor the language like listening to my favorite jazz recordings. It is jazz in writing; melodic, improvisational, happy and sad. The writing is wonderfully descriptive. As I read I think of friends who would love this book and when I finish I send it off. Each copy I send never comes back. I hope they are passing it on to other jazz lovers when they finish. Thanks to your used book service I will continue to purchase this wonderful book,reread it and then send it off to a friend. May I never run out of books or friends, or come to think of it, money to buy more books.

I suspect that most aficionados of modern jazz will appreciate, even treasure, BUT BEAUTIFUL. It is notoriously difficult (impossible, really) to write satisfactorily about music - whether classical or jazz. But Dyer comes closer than most.

The bulk of the book consists of imaginative profiles of Lester Young, Bud Powell, Ben Webster, Charles Mingus, Chet Baker, Art Pepper, and Thelonious Sphere Monk ("Melodious Thunk" to Nellie, his beloved wife and intermediary with the outside world). "Imaginative" because Dyer admittedly improvised on the historical facts of their lives, much as jazz musicians improvise on a theme. Much is embellishment, where Dyer tells about an historical event (such as Chet Baker getting his teeth knocked out or Lester Young's troubles in the Army) through, in part, invented dialogue and action. Some episodes, however, are completely fictitious. Still, Dyer writes, "these scenes were * * * intended as commentary either on a piece of music or on the particular qualities of a musician. What follows, then, is as much imaginative criticism as fiction."

This blurring of fact and fiction might make some readers feel a little uneasy (as it does me), but at least Dyer is up front about it and I do sense that the picture that emerges approaches a generalized plane of "truth" that is beyond more conventional and rigorous biographical/historical narratives.

Interlaced between the profiles is a series of vignettes of Duke Ellington and Harry Carney on the road, driving to their next job, Duke either sleeping or jotting down ideas for compositions on stray envelopes and paper napkins and then stuffing them in the glovebox. The book ends with a 33-page afterword, entitled "Tradition, Influence, and Innovation". In this essay, which for me was the best part of the book (or at least, the part that I am most likely to re-read), Dyer discusses the history of jazz post-WWII and some of the defining characteristics of jazz and jazz musicians, especially recurrent ones that wove in and out of the profiles.

The writing style is unusual - hip, noir-ish, frenetic, and modern. Usually it is successful, even brilliant, but at times it is overdone, at times it is sentimental, and on occasion it turns plain ugly. But that's jazz. The title comes from a conversation (imagined?) between Art Pepper and a married woman he is trying to talk into bed after having just been released from prison. (Perhaps the title is intentionally semi-ironic?)

The profiled musicians were all misfits, to varying degrees. One of the points Dyer highlights in the afterword is that jazz is notable for "its capacity to raise to the level of genius those who would otherwise have lacked a medium to express themselves." Going hand in hand is the propensity for jazz musicians to destroy themselves through drugs and booze. Why so? For one thing, jazz puts such a premium on individual creativity and a stance of rebellion, or at least flouting tradition and the establishment. In addition, a certain measure of emulation of the great Charlie Parker (or, later, of Coltrane, or Miles Davis, or Art Blakey, or Art Pepper) surely was at work, at least with many. But even making allowances for drugs, alcohol, and the odd hours and typically bohemian lifestyle of a jazz musician, several of these figures were at bottom pathetic and deplorable, even reprehensible, people - especially Mingus, Baker, and Pepper (with regards to Pepper, see the tale of the skewered chihuahua). But beautiful?

I will close with a small sampling of quotes from the book:

"It wasn't that jazz musicians died young, they just got older quicker."

Re Monk: "There were days when he was stranded between things, when the grammar of moving through the day, the syntax holding events together fell apart. Lost between words, between actions, not knowing something as simple as getting through a door, the rooms of the apartment becoming a maze." Also: "You had to see Monk to hear his music properly. The most important instrument in the group--whatever the format--was his body. He didn't play the piano really. His body was his instrument and the piano was just a means of getting the sound out of his body at the rate and in the quantities he wanted. * * * His body fills in all the gaps in the music; without seeing him it always sounds like something's missing but when you see him even piano solos acquire a sound as full as a quartet's. The eye hears what the ear misses."

"Electronic instruments define themselves in relation to--and partake of the quality of--din. Acoustic instruments define themselves in relation to--and partake of the quality of--silence. For this reason acoustic instruments will always have a greater purity."

Four-and-a-half stars.

It succeeds as a literary piece regardless of your feeling about jazz as a musical form. The book stands out in my mind as a total sensory experience; I still carry images evoked in my mind through the magnificent descriptions; I can smell the liquor and cigarettes and hear the rasping coughs behind the riffs of music. I had never listened to jazz very often before I read this book. Now the jazz station is a pre-programmed button on my stereo. Experience this book.