Joe Milazzo's Blog - Posts Tagged "crepusculewnellie"

Big thanks to David Eric Tomlinson and The Writer's League of Texas for this generous and insightful review of Crepuscule W/ Nellie.

An excerpt:

"In distinctive set pieces arranged 'like Chinese progressions' on a musical scale – there are diary entries to study, transcripts and letters, cartons of old photographs, film negatives, jam sessions and master tapes galore – we are taken on what feels like a voyeuristic ridealong, witnessing Monk compose his masterpiece. Monk’s marriage, the lifeblood running through his music, has started to buckle under the pressures of celebrity and art, racial politics and commerce, mental illness and intransigence ... but not (at least not yet) fortune."

The full review: https://writersleagueoftexas.wordpres...

Now available, here:

http://crepusculewnellie.com/

Submit your own annotations, here:

http://crepusculewnellie.com/submit/

“Crepuscule W/ Nellie is a book you would do well to read twice. At least. It is frustrating, brilliant, challenging, and ultimately rewarding, much like Thelonious Sphere Monk himself: ‘Not the facts. The truth.’” Huge thanks to Michelle Newby for this lively and generous review, the entirety of which you can read in this month’s issue of The Collagist.

http://thecollagist.com/the-collagist...

"A challenging, unconventional, rewarding imagining" featuring "striking, lush writing."

Read the complete review here: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...

With big thanks to John Venegas!

"At a time when our highest grossing movies are neatly trimmed escapist fantasies involving superhumans and when much of the American populace seeks another celebrity athlete upon which to pin their idolatry, I find this book particularly resonant. It is an examination of brilliance and humanity, an acknowledgement of the coexistence of what we label as flaws and beauty."

http://www.angelcityreview.com/crepus...

Crepuscule W/ Nellie is a novel of many subjects: a marriage, the artist’s lot, jazz as both American history and American aesthetic. But it is also a novel about race, and was always conceived of as such. As I learned more and more about what it means to be a novelist by putting hours in the book’s woodshed, I was surprised to discover that one of the ways in which Crepuscule W/ Nellie was most about race was by virtue of the authorial choices (and assumptions) exercised in its composition. “Problematic” is one of those terms that suffers from being as widely circulated as it is, but it is still the best bit of vocabulary I have at my disposal in terms of thinking about the whys and hows of my own position with regard to the African-American lives on which Crepuscule W/ Nellie ’s improvisations are based. The book is open to suspicion, and those suspicions aren’t alone, nor are they unhealthy – as I trust the afterword my editor, Janice Lee, asked me to write for the book attests. Because some readers may benefit from encountering this content before reading the novel itself, I’ve decided to go ahead and make a PDF of the afterword freely available via my website.

http://www.slowstudies.net/jmilazzo/w...

As noted in those pages: “Maybe my last and therefore most abundant hope is that this novel may lend an ear to what could have been, some ‘new past’ therefore more apt to inspire a reinvention of our present. In short, that this novel may listen as much as it babbles, warbles, and squalls out of its multiple mouthinesses.”

In celebration of Thelonious Monk’s 99th birthday (October 10), all proceeds from this week’s sales of Crepuscule W/Nellie: a novel will be donated to The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. Learn more about the Institue here: http://monkinstitute.org/about-us/our.... And purchase your copy of Crepuscule W/Nellie: a novel here: http://crepusculewnellie.com/