Home
Jonathan Lethem recommends But Beautiful by Geoff Dyer (North Point Press, $12)
For anyone left unsatisfied by the National Geographic version of jazz offered in the [Ken] Burns documentary, Dyer's achingly gorgeous book is the ticket. A series of penetrating and poetic fictional meditations that take the lives of Chet Baker, Ben Webster, Lester Young and others as points of entry, the book is so far as I know the only effective reply to jazz besides, well, other jazz. Dyer evokes the lives of working musicians so that you taste the whisky, smell the stubbed cigarettes, hear the gentle clicking of the valves, the coughs and shuffling feet between studio takes. If this book were a record it wouldn't be out of my disc changer for months on end.
Jonathan Lethem is the author of Motherless Brooklyn and Girl in Landscape. His most recent book, This Shape We're In, was published by McSweeney's in March.
