But Beautiful

In eight poetically charged vignettes, Geoff Dyer skillfully evokes the music and the men who shaped modern jazz. Drawing on photos, anecdotes, and, most important, the ways he hears the music, Dyer imaginatively reconstructs scenes from the embattled lives of some of the giants of jazz - Lester Young fading away in his hotel room; Charles Mingus storming down the streets of New York on a too-small bicycle; Thelonious Monk creating his own private language on the piano. Ben Webster, Chet Baker, Bud Powell, and Art Pepper are also here, and throughout the book is Duke Ellington as he crosses the country with Harry Carney. But music is really the driving force of But Beautiful and the author brings it to life in a luminescent and wildly metaphoric prose style that mirrors the quirks, eccentricity, and brilliance of each musician's style.