eBook

Fascinating Rhythm

Yaffe, David

2009,2006,2005

Overview

How have American writers written about jazz, and how has jazz influenced American literature? In Fascinating Rhythm, David Yaffe explores the relationship and interplay between jazz and literature, looking at jazz musicians and the themes literature has garnered from them by appropriating the style, tones, and innovations of jazz, and demonstrating that the poetics of jazz has both been assimilated into, and deeply affected, the development of twentieth-century American literature. Yaffe explores how Jewish novelists such as Norman Mailer, J. D. Salinger, and Philip Roth engaged issues of racial, ethnic, and American authenticity by way of jazz; how Ralph Ellison's descriptions of Louis Armstrong led to a \"neoconservative\" movement in contemporary jazz; how poets such as Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, Langston Hughes, and Frank O'Hara were variously inspired by the music; and how memoirs by Billie Holiday, Charles Mingus, and Miles Davis both reinforced and redeemed the red light origins of jazz. The book confronts the current jazz discourse and shows how poets and novelists can be placed in it--often with problematic results. Fascinating Rhythm stops to listen for the music, demonstrating how jazz continues to speak for the American writer.

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Subject: 20th century / African American musicians in literature / Allen Ginsberg / American / American literature / American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism / American literature in English / American poetry / Amiri Baraka / At the Five Spot / Banality (sculpture series) / Beneath the Underdog / Bessie Smith / Billie Holiday / Biography / Black Mountain poets / Boarding school / Buddy Bolden / Case study / Charles Mingus / Charlie Christian / Charlie Parker / Clarinet / Composer / Cornel West / Count Basie / Cutting contest / Dance music / Dizzy Gillespie / Duke Ellington / Duration (music) / Edward Albee / Ellison, Ralph / Ellison, Ralph -- Knowledge -- Jazz / Fats Navarro / Fats Waller / Frank O'Hara / Genres & Styles / Gravity's Rainbow / Harlem Renaissance / Hart Crane / High Art / Hipster (contemporary subculture) / History / History and criticism / Improvisation / Jack Kerouac / Jazz / Jazz in literature / Jazz musicians / Jazz musicians -- Biography -- History and criticism / Jazz musicians in literature / John Coltrane / Josephine Baker / Kenneth Rexroth / Klezmer / Knowledge / Langston Hughes / Language & Literature / LITERARY CRITICISM / LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh / Louis Armstrong / Manifesto / Memoir / Miles Davis / Minstrel show / MUSIC / MUSIC / General / Music and literature / Music and literature -- History -- 20th century / Music Is / National Book Award / Oppressor / Parody / Petrarch / Platitude / Poetry / Prose / Prostitution / Ralph Ellison / Roy Eldridge / Saxophone / Sick man of Europe / Social club / Sonny's Blues / Stan Getz / Sympathy / T. S. Eliot / The Death of Bessie Smith / The White Negro / Thelonious Monk / Tonality / Wallace Stevens
• ISBN: 9781400826803, 1400826802, 0691123578, 9780691123578