Don't the Moon Look Lonesome: A Novel in Blues and Swing [Paperback]

Stanley Crouch (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 10, 2004

Stanley Crouch's gloriously bold first novel provides an intimate and epic portrait of America that breaks all the rules in crossing the boundaries of race, sex, and class. Blonde Carla from South Dakota is a jazz singer who has been around the block. Almost suddenly, she finds herself fighting to hold on to Maxwell, a black tenor saxophonist from Texas. Their red-hot and sublimely tender five-year union is under siege. Those black people who oppose such relatonships in the interest of romantic entitlement or group solidarity are pressuring Maxwell, and he is wavering. As Carla battles to save the deepest love of her life, her past plays out against the present, vividly bringing forth a startlingly fresh range of characters in scenes that are as accurately drawn as they are unpredictable and innovatively conceived.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Stanley Crouch is one of the great provocateurs in American letters, which has led Salon to call him "the bull in the black-intelligentsia China shop." Infamous for his controversial views on race, he loves to treat iconic figures such as Toni Morrison and Spike Lee as critical pincushions. However, he has built his career primarily as a reviewer and essayist. Don't the Moon Look Lonesome, then, represents his first attempt at fiction.

Crouch's novel tells the story of a mixed-race couple, both musicians, living in New York City. Maxwell is a black sax player; Carla is a white jazz singer. Their love for each other seems to transcend race--yet the great American dilemma keeps interfering, and as they try to gain acceptance from friends and family, jazz is the one thing that soothes them. In a typical altercation, a black man in a parking lot derides Carla as a "stringy-haired white girl." But as she listens to Maxwell perform immediately afterward, the very notes he plays seem like the best possible rebuttal, "more masculine and more tender and more androgynous and more than male or female or happy or sad or frightened or brave or knowing or befuddled than anything she had ever heard her man play."

Don't the Moon Look Lonesome is an awkwardly written novel, and a slow-moving one at that. Long passages are devoted to descriptions of the music Carla and Maxwell create, and while Crouch has inherited Albert Murray's mantle as one of our most lively jazz critics, his own voice merges with those of his characters in an odd and distracting way. They end up sharing both the author's appetite for provocation and his wordiness, which undermines the greatest mystery of music in the first place--its wordlessness. Crouch also has a propensity for bizarre metaphors attributed to inner states, a prime example being this thorny item: "the sudden spread of this interior cactus." Finally, female readers should be warned: one of Carla's major strengths is that despite her white skin, she has a black ass. Perhaps that's progress. And perhaps Crouch's editors were so intimidated by his reputation that they neglected to tell him when he was playing out of tune. --Emily White --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Jazz critic and essayist Crouch's first novel is a stylish love story told against the backdrop of the New York jazz scene. Carla, a white singer from South Dakota, and Maxwell, a black saxophone player of some renown, have been together for five years, but the pressures of race, art, success, and family threaten their future. As Carla searches through her memories of former loves for ways to break down the barriers between her and Maxwell, she struggles to find her own place in the competitive world of jazz. Crouch is at his best when writing about the music. His descriptions have a flow that makes the reader feel as though he or she is listening to a blues band or a gospel choir. Carla's thoughts have the cadence of an improvisational solo, going in various directions before returning to the original theme. While some of the dialog is talky and the main characters distant, those familiar with Crouch's nonfiction will want to read this novel, if only for its style. Recommended for larger collections.
---Ellen Flexman, Indianapolis-Marion Cty. P.L.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (August 10, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375724478
• ISBN-13: 978-0375724473
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #89,931 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Open minded, February 18, 2001

By 

"[e-mail]" (Austin, Tx. United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Don't the Moon Look Lonesome: A novel (Hardcover)

I found this book to be an open minded one, expressing many different viewpoints from many different people, hammering home the idea that the invidual and his/her freedom to make decisions should be the goal and landmark of America... It is also clear to me that Crouch has an amazing scope of knowledge, from music to literature to culture. The book is full of racial stereotypes coming from the mouths of the characters. But for every one of these characters, there exists an open minded, analytical thinker to counterbalance them. These conversations are the highlight of the book in my mind. The other highlight is Crouch's attempt to dissect jazz and other musical forms on paper, to try and recreate the actual song being played on to paper, giving us a reason for each note, stanza, etc. The big problem in this book, in my opinion, was that it seemed that Crouch was trying too hard in some instances to create the perfect sentence, leading to excess and cluttered verbeage. Some passages flowed beautifully, others dragged very slowly. As a result, the book seemed choppy and discongruent. I've always liked Stanley Crouch. He's bold, unafraid to speak his mind, intelligent, and witty. These characteristics come out in his first novel, a book about an interracial relationship between two musicians, their biographical histories, and their difficulties they encounter trying to hold their relationship together.. I've seen Crouch many times on TV, and although I don't always agree with him, I've always wanted to go have beers with him..

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars civilized talk, July 17, 2000

By 

William Russo (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Don't the Moon Look Lonesome: A novel (Hardcover)

I loved Stanley Crouch's book. It presents black characters in ways that are rarely presented in fiction, as people who talk about life with wit and humor on a very civilized level. They talk about justice and the purpose of existence. They talk about literature (Shakespeare), about classical music (Wagner), about painting (Leonardo and Picasso). And when they discuss jazz - as is to be expected in a book about a black jazz saxophone soloist and a white woman from Idaho who becomes a serious jazz singer - they talk not only about the feeling of jazz but about its content and the ideas that underlie it. Another strikingly original aspect of this book is that Crouch represents religion in our society as a powerful and stabilizing force (his description of a black church service in Houston is compelling and masterly). Is Crouch discursive?  Of course he is, but so was Shaw, and how about Homer?

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Diappointing, July 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Don't the Moon Look Lonesome: A novel (Hardcover)

As an admirer of Crouch's essays, I was looking forward to this book. But fiction is an art that Crouch has not come anywhere near mastering as he has done with the essay form. This book reads like a stream-of-consciousness first draft that went straight to the publisher. Where is that laser-like precision with language Crouch is noted for? Not in this book.