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coffeecrusader's review against another edition
5.0
Perhaps not exactly a tone poem, but close as one gets when writing about the form; it is nonetheless lyrical.
rachbreads's review
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Music took nothing out of you. Life did all the taking. Music is what you were given back but it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough.
File the above under "quotes that made me put the book down and cry." As a musician who has lost friends to drugs and mental illness and suicide, the price that art seems to take from many of its artists, this book hit so deeply for me. It's hard to ignore the death count and low life expectancy that has long characterized the genre of jazz, and here Dyer looks deep at that, without being too morbid. It's not about these men's deaths, but their lives, albeit the ways that they suffered as they lived. Every time I read something like this I think about They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us - (Abdurraqib is a fantastic comp for this book by the way), when Abdurraqib says
I know that I stopped thinking about extreme grief as the sole vehicle for great art when the grief started to take people with it.
And
I’d rather have average art and survival than miracles that come at the cost of someone’s life.
Do we accept madness and drugs and horrible, young deaths as the price that had to be paid for to get this undeniable genius to our ears? Dyer makes an interesting point,
How could an art form have developed so rapidly and at such a pitch of excitement without exacting a huge human toll? If jazz has a vital connection with “the universal struggle of modern man” how could the men who create it not bear the scars of that struggle?
It makes me grateful and sad and lonely, and I'm just so so glad I read this book.
Also, as a side note, this entire book is worth reading for the chapter on Thelonius Monk, which is really more about Nellie Monk, and the gentle grace that sustains eccentricity and genius.
Also, as a side note, this entire book is worth reading for the chapter on Thelonius Monk, which is really more about Nellie Monk, and the gentle grace that sustains eccentricity and genius.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug use
diegor's review against another edition
lighthearted
relaxing
slow-paced
3.75
Ha alti e bassi, alcuni racconti sono più scorrevoli e piacevoli di altri. Un buon libro da regalare magari ad un amico appassionato di musica, che non provi fastidio nel leggere cose che siano state eccessivamente romanzate rispetto alla realtà...
mark_lm's review against another edition
3.0
Sort of an imagined biography of several great jazz musicians of the 40s and 50s. The author uses the quality of each artist's music to model the imagery with which he describes them. The stories are similar with racism, mental illness and drug addiction playing important roles in almost every case.
There is a danger of romanticizing all of this with the usual comments that boil down to great artists must suffer.
==================
I think it is helpful to recall that before the discovery of Koch's bacillus (and for some time afterwards!), Tuberculosis was linked in literature and common thought with the artistic, the hyper sexual, and so forth. It does seem that depression, suicide and drug addiction are more common in creative people, but once a clear genetic linkage is found (if it is), the more artistic comments may seem silly - i.e. it may not be that great artists must suffer, just that they do.
There is a danger of romanticizing all of this with the usual comments that boil down to great artists must suffer.
==================
I think it is helpful to recall that before the discovery of Koch's bacillus (and for some time afterwards!), Tuberculosis was linked in literature and common thought with the artistic, the hyper sexual, and so forth. It does seem that depression, suicide and drug addiction are more common in creative people, but once a clear genetic linkage is found (if it is), the more artistic comments may seem silly - i.e. it may not be that great artists must suffer, just that they do.
jacquesdevilliers's review against another edition
For lovers of books about music and lovers of books that read like music - for lovers of language, really - do not sleep on this aching, bluesy dream of a book.
And lying here now, noticing the valleys and dunes formed in the creased sheets, damp with a light dew of sweat, she realized how wrong she had been to think that he played for no one but himself: he didn’t even play for himself – he just played. He was the exact opposite of his friend Art, who put everything of himself into every note he played: Chet put nothing of himself into his music and that’s what lent his playing its pathos. The music he played felt abandoned by him...
That was how he had always played and always would. Every time he played a note he waved it goodbye. Sometimes he didn’t even wave. Those old songs, they were used to being loved and wanted by the people who played them; musicians hugged them and made them feel brand-new, fresh. Chet left a song feeling bereft. When he played it the song needed comforting: it wasn’t his playing that was packed with feeling, it was the song itself, feeling hurt. You felt each note trying to stay with him a little longer, pleading with him. The song itself cried out to anyone who would listen: please, please, please.
And lying here now, noticing the valleys and dunes formed in the creased sheets, damp with a light dew of sweat, she realized how wrong she had been to think that he played for no one but himself: he didn’t even play for himself – he just played. He was the exact opposite of his friend Art, who put everything of himself into every note he played: Chet put nothing of himself into his music and that’s what lent his playing its pathos. The music he played felt abandoned by him...
That was how he had always played and always would. Every time he played a note he waved it goodbye. Sometimes he didn’t even wave. Those old songs, they were used to being loved and wanted by the people who played them; musicians hugged them and made them feel brand-new, fresh. Chet left a song feeling bereft. When he played it the song needed comforting: it wasn’t his playing that was packed with feeling, it was the song itself, feeling hurt. You felt each note trying to stay with him a little longer, pleading with him. The song itself cried out to anyone who would listen: please, please, please.
jeffhall's review against another edition
4.0
Jazz is a difficult topic for any writer to approach, both because music generally defies explication in words, and because jazz particularly is an endlessly mutable art form, never the same today as it was yesterday. So most writing on the topic of jazz is informational without being insightful.
In But Beautiful, Geoff Dyer tackles this quandary with considerable grace, sidestepping any attempt to describe the music itself by focusing on how the lives of some of its greatest practitioners informed the sounds they produced. His chapter on Charles Mingus is particularly good, brilliantly articulating how that master of contradictions turned personal turmoil into aural art that just barely balanced beauty and chaos, all while expressing deep truths about the American experience.
My one reservation with But Beautiful is a somewhat morbid focus on the role of substance abuse in the lives of Dyer's subjects. While all of this has a factual basis, the chapter on Art Pepper and his heroin addiction is somewhat grotesque, more imbued with blood, vomit, and smack than it is with music. Dyer's gaze is unflinching, but also sometimes voyeuristic in ways that don't do his narrative any favors.
But all in all, But Beautiful may indeed be the best book ever written about jazz. Geoff Dyer took on a huge challenge in writing this volume, and it succeeds quite a bit more often than it fails.
In But Beautiful, Geoff Dyer tackles this quandary with considerable grace, sidestepping any attempt to describe the music itself by focusing on how the lives of some of its greatest practitioners informed the sounds they produced. His chapter on Charles Mingus is particularly good, brilliantly articulating how that master of contradictions turned personal turmoil into aural art that just barely balanced beauty and chaos, all while expressing deep truths about the American experience.
My one reservation with But Beautiful is a somewhat morbid focus on the role of substance abuse in the lives of Dyer's subjects. While all of this has a factual basis, the chapter on Art Pepper and his heroin addiction is somewhat grotesque, more imbued with blood, vomit, and smack than it is with music. Dyer's gaze is unflinching, but also sometimes voyeuristic in ways that don't do his narrative any favors.
But all in all, But Beautiful may indeed be the best book ever written about jazz. Geoff Dyer took on a huge challenge in writing this volume, and it succeeds quite a bit more often than it fails.
georgemillership's review against another edition
3.0
At one point I was reading a character intro and thought 'this is about Ben Webster'. lo and behold, I turned the page, and it was. Such is the power of Dyer's writing.
Interesting, but more as a curiosity. Certain characterisations are overblown and cartoonish, whilst some are hard-hitting and emotional. I got a weird mix of good and bad out of it. Worth a read if you're a jazz aficionado, for sure.
Interesting, but more as a curiosity. Certain characterisations are overblown and cartoonish, whilst some are hard-hitting and emotional. I got a weird mix of good and bad out of it. Worth a read if you're a jazz aficionado, for sure.