Bass Cathedral

From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate #4

by Nathaniel Mackey, Wilson Harris (Foreword)

The Great American Jazz Novel by Nathaniel Mackey, winner of the 2006 National Book Award.

Los Angeles, October 1982: Molimo m'Atet, formerly known as the The Mystic Horn Society, is preparing to release its new album Orphic Bend. The members of the jazz ensemble—Aunt Nancy, Djamilaa, Drennette, Lambert, N., and Penguin—are witness to a strange occurrence: while listening to their test pressing, the moment Aunt Nancy's bass solo begins a balloon emerges from the vinyl, bearing a mysterious message: I dreamt you were gone.... Through letters N. writes to a figure called Angel of Dust, the ever-mutating story unfolds, leaving no musician or listener untouched.

Bass Cathedral is Mackey's fourth volume in his ongoing novel with no beginning or end, From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate. Thought balloons morph into mute-stereoptic emanations; N. encounters a master mouthpiece-maker; Drennette leaves Penguin dateless; Lambert's kicking it around with Melanie—much is abuzz but something else is happening to the ensemble. The music seems to be living them. N. suffers cowrie shell attacks and they are all stranded on an Orphic Shore. Socio-political forces are at play or has this always been the essence and accident of the music's resilience? And Hotel Didjeridoo must be resurrected, but how? Myth spins music spins thought spins sex—Mackey's post-bop boxless box set is, as the Utne Reader wrote, "Avant-garde literature you can love: an evolving multivolume novel of the jazz world that plays with language and ideas the way Thelonious Monk plays with flatted fifths."

Genres: Fiction, Poetry, Music, Literature

183 pages, Paperback

First published January 31, 2008

About the author

Poet and novelist Nathaniel Mackey was born in 1947 in Miami, Florida. He received a BA degree from Princeton University and a PhD from Stanford University.

Nathaniel Mackey has received numerous awards including a Whiting Writer’s Award and a 2010 Guggenheim fellowship. He is the Reynolds Price Professor of English at Duke University and served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2001 to 2007. Mackey currently lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Reviews

[Salem · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mackey definitely is pushing the boundaries of novel, and I'm curious to read the other volumes in this multi-volume work. However, it seemed on occasion that Mackey was being intentionally disdainful of his reader, and comes across as pretentious. I'd also recommend having a working knowledge of jazz and a handy dictionary.

[Shuk Wah Lee]

High literature indeed. Too high to comprehend.

[Lillian Lippold · Rating 4 out of 5]

in the first half of this book, i felt a desire to write it off because i didn’t fully understand what it was trying to do or access. but the more i read and the more i grew compassionate for N (the continual querying and writing and desiring may have been a part of this compassion), the more ambivalent i grew. perhaps we should not be so readily allowed entrance to every novel we read? perhaps that is too presumptuous?

so to read a book you have been locked out of. the language was a barrier at times, but i think part of the point of that is that you learn to read by sound. reading by sound, this book is beautiful. the pacing of the language was striking. did i care deeply for the “conflict” in that classic sense? not really at all. i felt no urgency to reach the end. and yet? i still arrived there, so there is something to be said about the power of narrative structure and the curiosity that drives one to keep peering in through the window. anyway.

i don’t know if i’ll read another of this novel, but i’m glad i read this one.

[Piotr · Rating 3 out of 5]

While 'Cathedral' is probably the finest novel "about" jazz that I've read, this epistolary narrative exploring the supernatural events that take place around an LA group's writing, performing and recording of new material is not an easy read. There are linguistic and philosophical layers to Mackey's writing that I will only comprehend on ensuing trips (yes, I'll go back). But two things would recommend this book to anyone who likes improvisational music: The first being the incredible scope of references to a history of great sounds that, if you have never heard them, you'll want to (Mackey's knowledge is beyond masterful). The other is the description of the playing as it is being performed, which is also magnificent. Lost in Music indeed...

[Jon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I do not possess the necessary knowledge of jazz history or theory to really dig this. I found myself constantly wanting to look up references to understand what was being written. Turns out I am much too lazy of a reader now-a-days. I like the idea of it but couldn't put in the work to find enjoyment from it, and count this as my own problem and not that of the author.

[Tim]

Fourth in Mackey's FaBBToPSE series of epistolary novels. David Hadju, in a recent review in the NY Times, called the books in the series "essentially interchangeable," and he's right; but not in the way that David Markson's last four books have been interchangeable--rather they're more like albums from an artist whose albums all sound much the same but are all still great anyway. Bass Cathedral (and the rest of the books in the series) is erudite, idiosyncratic, full of stylish prose, occasionally frustrating and pretentious, often satisfying in the way that the best prose artists are satisfying--it's really like very little out there. This one might be a little funnier than the others (very little--Mackey's not interested in much more than a chuckle), and it seems more interested in the writerly nature of art than others in the series, and it once again never exactly climaxes but instead ends in a strange lecture/libretto that seems to explain nothing but still resonates weirdly. Joe Bob says check it out.

[Chrissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like the TARDIS, this book is bigger than it appears on the outside and there are intimations of wonderful things. Like the Doctor, however, The Author doesn't give up his secrets willingly. In fact, he'd rather not give them up, casting prose at you that breaks and doubles back and repeats, perhaps, if you can decipher the words.

It was, for me, a difficult book. I don't speak the language of jazz; neither, it turns out, does my dictionary. I read it, essentially, for the chorus, for the parts that I could understand and for the sentences that shone in places. I wouldn't attempt another one, but I'm glad I read this one.

[Evan Woodward · Rating 3 out of 5]

A friend got me this book as a surprise gift which I really appreciated, as it is a singularly bizarre book that I never would have picked up on my own.

Mackey is an Anthony Braxton or a Sonny Sharrock of words. Inventing phrases, conjuring idioms, sonorous and flowing at times, jarring and jagged at others. I found the story itself to be less than thrilling, but his method of telling it to be fascinating.

[Jeff · Rating 1 out of 5]

I only read about 1/3 of this book, and I did not enjoy what I read. I think the writing is technically great, but it was too dense and the story didn't seem to make much sense to me. I would skip this one, though it may reflect my lack of understanding more than any bad writing.