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A review by jeffhall
But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz by Geoff Dyer
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.