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1929
Celebrated jazz artist Bix Beiderbecke recounts his early jams at the Caponed-controlled Blue Lantern Casino, grueling cross-country tours with Paul Whiteman's "Symphonic Jazz" orchestra, disastrous efforts to make a first all-color talkie musical, experiences during the stock market crash, and dying attempt to audit his life's work. A first novel. 50,000 first printing.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
July 17, 2012
Torn on this one. The fact that I finished it is a testament to the fact that I liked it on several levels. And yet at the end, I felt like it went out with a whimper rather than a bang and had dragged on too much. The style is heavily overwritten in a lot of places -- Turner seems to be laboring to capture the kinetic, slangy style so popular in the tabloids of the 1920s. Sometimes it works and sometimes it drives you crazy.
The book tells parallel stories; on the one hand, the embellished-but-mostly-true-story of the short, meteoric career and sad downfall of early jazz legend Bix Biederbecke. And on the other, a fictionalized story of a brother and sister whose lives get entwined with Chicago mobsters and the jazz music they prefer in their speakeasies. The mobster storyline is ostensibly the secondary one, though I found that storyline much more entertaining and engrossing than the story of Bix Biederbecke, as though not being bound by any kind of historical accuracy has freed Turner to create a more intricate and compelling story.
Turner is great at setting scenes; terrible at writing complex female characters. (From this book, you would think that the only ways women found to amuse themselves in the 1920s were to masturbate and read magazines.) Luckily, the 1920s were a decade full of great scenes to set, and mostly what kept me reading to the end was just the desire to live in the 1920s Chicago, New York and Hollywood that Turner re-creates.
The book tells parallel stories; on the one hand, the embellished-but-mostly-true-story of the short, meteoric career and sad downfall of early jazz legend Bix Biederbecke. And on the other, a fictionalized story of a brother and sister whose lives get entwined with Chicago mobsters and the jazz music they prefer in their speakeasies. The mobster storyline is ostensibly the secondary one, though I found that storyline much more entertaining and engrossing than the story of Bix Biederbecke, as though not being bound by any kind of historical accuracy has freed Turner to create a more intricate and compelling story.
Turner is great at setting scenes; terrible at writing complex female characters. (From this book, you would think that the only ways women found to amuse themselves in the 1920s were to masturbate and read magazines.) Luckily, the 1920s were a decade full of great scenes to set, and mostly what kept me reading to the end was just the desire to live in the 1920s Chicago, New York and Hollywood that Turner re-creates.
June 12, 2016
Jazz and the 1920s are subjects I love, so I was happy to come across this book. It had lots of wonderful reviews, too, so I jumped right into it. But it took quite a while for me to feel the story; it’s a fictionalized biography of jazz coronetist Bix Beiderbecke but in the beginning it focuses just as much on the gang activity in Chicago, largely as experienced by Henry Wise (not his original name), former mechanic and driver for Al Capone, and his sister Helen/Hellie/Lulu, who is the girlfriend of Machine Gun Jack McGurn (the Wise siblings are fictional). In fact, the book starts in modern days, at the annual celebration of Beiderbecke, the Bix Fest, with Wise reminiscing at Bix’s grave. As Wise remembers, Bix moves from peripheral character to main, then the narrative viewpoint leaves Wise behind completely and becomes all Bix- but never from Bix’s actual point of view. He always remains viewed from the outside; we never get to see more than he shares with other people. And he shared very, very little. The people around him can never figure him out, can never make a real connection with him. He’s a (mostly) gentle person, and quiet a lot of the time, but he has a totally flat affect. Despite my respect for his work, I had trouble caring about him as a character in this book. But it’s not just him; the other characters don’t fare much better. We get celebrities- Bing Crosby, Clara Bow, Maurice Ravel (I never knew he liked jazz), bandleader Paul Whiteman, Louis Armstrong and others- but only Clara comes to life at all.
Bix was a mainly self-taught player; he couldn’t read music very well but had an incredible ear. Along with horn, he played piano. Sadly, he was an alcoholic and during Prohibition what was sold wasn’t always safe to drink. He was known to drink some stuff (alcohol with a poisonous denaturant) that ended up killing thousands of people, and it was likely that which caused his short life as much as drinking regular booze. He was only 28 when he died, having been sent to ‘dry out’ a few times by his family but always going back to booze when he got out. He was sad example of ‘live fast, die young’ and the world lost a great talent when he died.
The prose is fast paced and jerky; it barely stops for a breath. It’s like the words are doing the Charleston. While I get that this was to make the reader feel like they were in that fast paced decade, it got tiring to read. There is no real plot; it’s a telling of “and then so and so did this; then that”. I can understand why; a person’s life rarely has a plot like fiction does. I have conflicting feelings about this book; I didn’t really enjoy reading it (and thought at times of not finishing it) but I don’t feel it was a waste of time. I’m not sure if it’s the book or if I’m missing something.
Bix was a mainly self-taught player; he couldn’t read music very well but had an incredible ear. Along with horn, he played piano. Sadly, he was an alcoholic and during Prohibition what was sold wasn’t always safe to drink. He was known to drink some stuff (alcohol with a poisonous denaturant) that ended up killing thousands of people, and it was likely that which caused his short life as much as drinking regular booze. He was only 28 when he died, having been sent to ‘dry out’ a few times by his family but always going back to booze when he got out. He was sad example of ‘live fast, die young’ and the world lost a great talent when he died.
The prose is fast paced and jerky; it barely stops for a breath. It’s like the words are doing the Charleston. While I get that this was to make the reader feel like they were in that fast paced decade, it got tiring to read. There is no real plot; it’s a telling of “and then so and so did this; then that”. I can understand why; a person’s life rarely has a plot like fiction does. I have conflicting feelings about this book; I didn’t really enjoy reading it (and thought at times of not finishing it) but I don’t feel it was a waste of time. I’m not sure if it’s the book or if I’m missing something.
November 1, 2016
At least Frederick Turner knows what his problem is. In 1929, the first-time novelist has placed front and center a real-life character who barely registers as a character at all: the jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke.
Right there on page 3, an old friend of Bix wonders what it is about old photographs that fail to capture any consistent essence of the young genius, the soft-spoken white kid who helped mold jazz into high art and who died of gin and pneumonia at the age of 28. Yup, the hair is right, and those big ears are definitely his. But somehow the man is still missing. It’s “as if even in the random, improvised midst of his life Bix had wished to reserve some part or essence of himself from the pitiless inquisition of his peculiar, unpremeditated fame and the camera’s eye, managing in whatever circumstance that shy, long-lashed, down-looking attitude that precluded definitive image.”
Such a statement could be an ambitious writer’s self-dare or an early mea culpa. So which is it going to be? This is why we read on, happily encountering plenty of Tommy guns and hot solos, a few meditative interludes and some entertaining walk-ons by Al “Snorky” Capone and the French composer Maurice Ravel. 1929 is packed with pulp and artistry (both in subject and execution), but in the end it’s a game attempt that fails.
The bottom line is, if bummed-out and absent-minded Bix can’t perk up for Clara Bow (“Must be maybe a million guys don't know me at all would like ta be where you’re at now,” the Hollywood It Girl whines), how can he be expected to carry 390 pages?
Read my full review here: http://bit.ly/2faptUv
Right there on page 3, an old friend of Bix wonders what it is about old photographs that fail to capture any consistent essence of the young genius, the soft-spoken white kid who helped mold jazz into high art and who died of gin and pneumonia at the age of 28. Yup, the hair is right, and those big ears are definitely his. But somehow the man is still missing. It’s “as if even in the random, improvised midst of his life Bix had wished to reserve some part or essence of himself from the pitiless inquisition of his peculiar, unpremeditated fame and the camera’s eye, managing in whatever circumstance that shy, long-lashed, down-looking attitude that precluded definitive image.”
Such a statement could be an ambitious writer’s self-dare or an early mea culpa. So which is it going to be? This is why we read on, happily encountering plenty of Tommy guns and hot solos, a few meditative interludes and some entertaining walk-ons by Al “Snorky” Capone and the French composer Maurice Ravel. 1929 is packed with pulp and artistry (both in subject and execution), but in the end it’s a game attempt that fails.
The bottom line is, if bummed-out and absent-minded Bix can’t perk up for Clara Bow (“Must be maybe a million guys don't know me at all would like ta be where you’re at now,” the Hollywood It Girl whines), how can he be expected to carry 390 pages?
Read my full review here: http://bit.ly/2faptUv
November 7, 2019
A 3.5, but I'm rounding up. On the one hand, I'm not sure anyone needs another novel about an alcoholic white male artist, but in the end Turner is able to capture so well a glimpse of truth within his fiction that it feels worth it.
There are moments, particularly in the early-middle of the book, where you can FEEL the music, and I will always appreciate an author who can bring a reader asking on that aural journey. The writing itself feels chaotic in some of those early big music scenes with Bix and the band bringing that "hot" jazz, absolutely causing a raucous energy.
This is obviously contrasted with much of the rest of the book, which bobs around in Bix's fog, particularly without Herman as a stabilizing force. And this helps you feel Bix's uneasiness, the hodgepodge of his life as it bounces along, all the while with no glue. But it still manages to capture the "tortured artist" schtick without celebrating it. The focus in that case where it IS celebrated is almost negative, pushing back against myth creation even while this book itself lionizes someone I can't imagine many have heard of and could therefore be seen as furthering a myth.
I think ultimately the blend of true history with a completely fabricated set of interactions and headspace helps balance capturing the reality of the 20s with a compelling look at coping with, not really failure, but mediocrity.
I don't know how much I'd recommend this because I could easily see folks finding it forgettable, but I appreciated the inner truth to what Turner put together, and it worked for me, personally.
There are moments, particularly in the early-middle of the book, where you can FEEL the music, and I will always appreciate an author who can bring a reader asking on that aural journey. The writing itself feels chaotic in some of those early big music scenes with Bix and the band bringing that "hot" jazz, absolutely causing a raucous energy.
This is obviously contrasted with much of the rest of the book, which bobs around in Bix's fog, particularly without Herman as a stabilizing force. And this helps you feel Bix's uneasiness, the hodgepodge of his life as it bounces along, all the while with no glue. But it still manages to capture the "tortured artist" schtick without celebrating it. The focus in that case where it IS celebrated is almost negative, pushing back against myth creation even while this book itself lionizes someone I can't imagine many have heard of and could therefore be seen as furthering a myth.
I think ultimately the blend of true history with a completely fabricated set of interactions and headspace helps balance capturing the reality of the 20s with a compelling look at coping with, not really failure, but mediocrity.
I don't know how much I'd recommend this because I could easily see folks finding it forgettable, but I appreciated the inner truth to what Turner put together, and it worked for me, personally.
October 20, 2011
Before I knew Bix was a real person, I was thinking three stars for the book. When I found out he was a real person, I was down to two. Then I went back to the front of the book and read this disclaimer: "This is a work of fiction. Though it draws on American history of the 1920s, its characters and incidents are the author's own inventions and are not intended to represent actual figures and events. The work, in other words, is an imaginative narrative, not a historical one."
Uh, bullshit. One star. Almost all of the major characters are real people from real history, and a little Googling told me that much of what happens is real. Sure, there are some WILDLY imaginative connections between some of these real people, but to try to hide under the above disclaimer is shoddy.
Oh, also, it is ridiculously long-winded. I read it a few books after a collection of short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This imitator with its gangsters and jazz is nothing like the real master of the jazz age.
Uh, bullshit. One star. Almost all of the major characters are real people from real history, and a little Googling told me that much of what happens is real. Sure, there are some WILDLY imaginative connections between some of these real people, but to try to hide under the above disclaimer is shoddy.
Oh, also, it is ridiculously long-winded. I read it a few books after a collection of short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This imitator with its gangsters and jazz is nothing like the real master of the jazz age.
January 5, 2008
It's an interesting imagining of the life of Bix Beiderbecke and others in the Prohibition era. I found the characters less than sympathetic, but it did leave me with something to remember.
February 8, 2021
An engrossing fictional retelling of the legendary life of American jazz cornetist and pianist, Bix Beiderbecke. Turner imbues the novel with a plethora of slang and memorable characters from the late 1920s/early 1930s though most of the references are probably lost on a Gen Zer like me. Bix is a difficult character to root for, with his subdued personality and mind for only music and alcohol, so Turner peppers the story with secondary plotlines following Capone and his cronies, Helen Weiss (a.k.a. Lulu Rolfe or Hellie), and Helen's brother Herman. Despite Bix's lack of personal charisma in the novel, Turner successfully showcases the star's musical talents and justifies the reverential treatment of his career even decades after his passing.
The novel flits casually from one perspective to the next, leaving some plotlines in limbo while others are pursued and resolved, giving the story a disjointed quality at times. The nature of Bix's premature death is revealed in the first several pages of the story (although this would already be apparent to anyone with prior knowledge of the guy), so the rest of the narrative hurtles towards this sad, inevitable conclusion. Even Bix seems to know where he's headed, and even in his better moments, it's hard to view his story as anything more than unfortunate. Overall, it was an interesting foray into a previously unexplored era for me, and I'm glad to have been introduced to Bix's energetic music which reveals nothing of the lost, unfulfilled man behind the recordings.
The novel flits casually from one perspective to the next, leaving some plotlines in limbo while others are pursued and resolved, giving the story a disjointed quality at times. The nature of Bix's premature death is revealed in the first several pages of the story (although this would already be apparent to anyone with prior knowledge of the guy), so the rest of the narrative hurtles towards this sad, inevitable conclusion. Even Bix seems to know where he's headed, and even in his better moments, it's hard to view his story as anything more than unfortunate. Overall, it was an interesting foray into a previously unexplored era for me, and I'm glad to have been introduced to Bix's energetic music which reveals nothing of the lost, unfulfilled man behind the recordings.
April 8, 2019
3.5 Stars... I found it interesting because of the subject matter: early jazz and prohibition, and how the author weaves together real events into a work that feels like straight fiction. The writing style is these huge paragraphs with long run on sentences... not the most effective and annoying to read, but once I got through a hundred pages I got used to it and even started to enjoy it. Read the book before I went to bed each night and loved it. The way the author talks about jazz, getting into the details of phrasing without ever discussing technical notes or chords, was the most interesting part to me.
December 7, 2020
Midway through I started to enjoy this book. It’s super dense, the writing style is sometimes words just for the sale of words. But once you get a sense of the characters and story, it comes together. Definitely a specific style of writing, but he definitely leaned into the time! A lot of different strings that come together at the end.
July 30, 2018
There were times the book was really interesting and then other times that the book slowly trudged along. By the end I just wanted to finish it because I was so close to the end. I wanted it to be better, but it was fine and I finished it.
January 11, 2026
I got half way through the book and I just could not get into it. It just seemed to ramble on and I wasn’t seeing any character development.
March 9, 2019
I don’t even feel like this book is worth reviewing. F. Scott Fitzgerald wannabe. Fails miserably. The end.
December 22, 2013
I'm really torn by this book. I have never learned so much about numerous musicians, actors, public figures, jazz music, and the 1920s decade from any other book as much as I did with this one. I felt like I knew Bix Beiderbecke and I felt connected to what he was experiencing. I also loved how, for the most part, the details of the book were historically accurate, and every person mentioned was real and from that same time, location, etc.
However, I felt like the book was written in such an overly heavy, complicated style with too many details. Often times I didn't even know what the relevance was of something or why so many pages were spent on one event. I also found it sad that such a huge amount of the book focused on the loss of his talent and demise, which made the book feel hopeless and sort of hard to swallow.
I understand that his life was not completely rosey, but to spend almost 200 pages of a 390 page book slowly detailing how awful and talentless he was seemed like a bit of an overkill. Yet, somehow this book has left a quite an impression on me that i'm not sure i can get over.
However, I felt like the book was written in such an overly heavy, complicated style with too many details. Often times I didn't even know what the relevance was of something or why so many pages were spent on one event. I also found it sad that such a huge amount of the book focused on the loss of his talent and demise, which made the book feel hopeless and sort of hard to swallow.
I understand that his life was not completely rosey, but to spend almost 200 pages of a 390 page book slowly detailing how awful and talentless he was seemed like a bit of an overkill. Yet, somehow this book has left a quite an impression on me that i'm not sure i can get over.
October 28, 2014
When I originally picked this, I thought it was going to be non-fiction, and I think I'd still rather read a non-fiction history of this period. Not because of the semi-fictionalization -- I didn't hate the story, necessarily -- but the conceit of the writing made this a tiring book to read. Perhaps it would have worked better as a short fiction, but I could have used more restful moments. Less non-stop, run-on sentences, especially when the events are of quieter, introspective nature.
January 30, 2012
I'd grown up hearing Beiderbecke's music but until I read "1929" never attached so much depth and emotion to his sound. Turner writes through a unique perspective to reveal three of humanity's favorite things: music, love, and history. Highly recommend this book if you've an interest for jazz and the past!
February 24, 2013
Don't read this if you're looking for an engaging story (the story is sparse), or if you're looking for historical info on Bix Beiderbecke (it's only loosely based on reality). Read it if you're looking for a book that evokes the FEELING of the 1920s. Or, at least, what I imagine the 1920s felt like.
January 10, 2008
Tales of jazz legend Bix Beiderbecke.
January 31, 2008
Being a big jazz-age fan, I thought I was really going to like this one...not so much. I felt like it dragged along, but I kept reading in hopes that it would get better.
March 22, 2009
An interesting, often dark read about Jazz musicians and gangsters - not too bloody, quite informative
January 4, 2013
Like the time period, liked the book.
October 28, 2014
lovely, sad story amidst the roaring twenties, jazz age and fueled with alcoholism.
September 25, 2015
I thought it was going to be more exciting. Of Coarse it wasn't because, it was non fiction.
January 20, 2016
Too tedious to finish.
February 19, 2017
Couldn't finish it!
July 30, 2008
learned about great jazz artist Bix Beiderback
June 3, 2016
Could not finish this! Draggy, sad tale about a star burning too brightly and flaming out...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews