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The Blue Devils of Nada: A Contemporary American Approach to Aesthetic Statement
Murray gives readers the redefined essence of his lifetime meditation on the blues as this musical style informs American life. Here are incisive essays on writing, music, and art that go beyond the social-science fiction of Negrohood to describe in no uncertain terms what it means to be American.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 4, 2023
I like Murray a lot overall, but this was a tough reread.
I thought of Ta Neihisi Coates, whose tragic public incoherence and equivocation on reparations got parlayed into a grift in San Francisco and will be a formidable weapon used by the right in 2024. I thought about this from the other side because at the end of this book, Murray stops being a writer of sublime gifts and reduces himself to being a rhetorical bomb thrower of the right. In short, this is a portrait of a writer in dire need of getting the hell of his bubble
The book flies pretty well In the first 2/3rds when he describes the grounded, pragmatic magic of Count Basie’s Arrangments, and the modernist-but-populistic tone poetics of Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. It crashes into a barnyard silo when he defends Hemingway at ihis worst. To Have and Have Not is Hemingway’s first bout of philosophical and ideological gin filth, gussied up by his rich protagonist discovering and having compassion for poor people. The modernist tone poet of 10 years before who said more in what he didn’t say had vanished, replaced by an essentialist in his id, dumping pounds of racial and sexual cruelty into the page( cruelty critiqued out even in its time), and calling it nuance. And by the end of it, it is hard to escape the sense, that at the end of it, you get the sense that poverty and the depression are doing a lot of work covering for the rancid sins of his imagination. ‘
Murray’s response to it is the call Hemingway an honorary black man, and deem the gleeful bigotry of Harry Morgan and his circle “a language closer to the blues and black speech” He even goes so far as to say he was more in tune with black culture than even Faulkner, something that kneecaps his own superb writing on Faulkner, and flies in the face of the Hemingway who racism toward the cuba-visiting-dodgers was so rancid, that Jackie Robinson went to his gates in Finca Vijia to “talk with him”). Again, I like Murray overall, but this is the first thing I’ve read from him when I thought “this is bad writing” and “this reads like a grift”. It also gives a skeptical close reader a credible reason to hate him on account that Murray was so sensitive and triggered by the idea of black self-pity THAT HE EVEN SAW IT IN ARETHA FRANKLIN, yet gleefully champions an essentialist society’s child novel from a racist white millionaire wallowing in his own filth.
Murray was cast aside by the right when he refused to support the idea of set aside seats for white jazz musicians in lincoln center. it was the best thing to happen to his work. His being cast aside shattered his reliance on his stiff upper lip: and made him a more interesting and unpredictable writer. The last of the scooter books, where the protagonist doesn’t find the success that he strives for but finds his idiosyncratic self, are grotesquely underrated
I thought of Ta Neihisi Coates, whose tragic public incoherence and equivocation on reparations got parlayed into a grift in San Francisco and will be a formidable weapon used by the right in 2024. I thought about this from the other side because at the end of this book, Murray stops being a writer of sublime gifts and reduces himself to being a rhetorical bomb thrower of the right. In short, this is a portrait of a writer in dire need of getting the hell of his bubble
The book flies pretty well In the first 2/3rds when he describes the grounded, pragmatic magic of Count Basie’s Arrangments, and the modernist-but-populistic tone poetics of Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. It crashes into a barnyard silo when he defends Hemingway at ihis worst. To Have and Have Not is Hemingway’s first bout of philosophical and ideological gin filth, gussied up by his rich protagonist discovering and having compassion for poor people. The modernist tone poet of 10 years before who said more in what he didn’t say had vanished, replaced by an essentialist in his id, dumping pounds of racial and sexual cruelty into the page( cruelty critiqued out even in its time), and calling it nuance. And by the end of it, it is hard to escape the sense, that at the end of it, you get the sense that poverty and the depression are doing a lot of work covering for the rancid sins of his imagination. ‘
Murray’s response to it is the call Hemingway an honorary black man, and deem the gleeful bigotry of Harry Morgan and his circle “a language closer to the blues and black speech” He even goes so far as to say he was more in tune with black culture than even Faulkner, something that kneecaps his own superb writing on Faulkner, and flies in the face of the Hemingway who racism toward the cuba-visiting-dodgers was so rancid, that Jackie Robinson went to his gates in Finca Vijia to “talk with him”). Again, I like Murray overall, but this is the first thing I’ve read from him when I thought “this is bad writing” and “this reads like a grift”. It also gives a skeptical close reader a credible reason to hate him on account that Murray was so sensitive and triggered by the idea of black self-pity THAT HE EVEN SAW IT IN ARETHA FRANKLIN, yet gleefully champions an essentialist society’s child novel from a racist white millionaire wallowing in his own filth.
Murray was cast aside by the right when he refused to support the idea of set aside seats for white jazz musicians in lincoln center. it was the best thing to happen to his work. His being cast aside shattered his reliance on his stiff upper lip: and made him a more interesting and unpredictable writer. The last of the scooter books, where the protagonist doesn’t find the success that he strives for but finds his idiosyncratic self, are grotesquely underrated
November 14, 2014
The author begins the book with an inspirational prologue with quotes such as "Man, most critics feel that unless brownskin U.S. writers are pissing and moaning about injustice, they have nothing to say...," "art is a species of deliberate modality derived from reenactment through ritual and play. Thus, the creative act is an effort to give enduring shape or pattern and meaning to the perpetual-seeming flux of ongoing experience...," and "regional particulars - the idiomatic details, the down-home conventions, the provincial customs and folkways must be processed into artistic statement, stylized into significance... but it is the universal statement he should be striving for." He differentiates fine art from pop art as "quality of extension, elaboration, and refinement involved in the creative process, the process, to reiterate again, that transforms or stylizes, raw, direct experience into aesthetic statement." He states that "national imperatives" of art require that the artist "stylize the raw native materials, experiences, and the idiomatic particulars of everyday life into aesthetic (which is to say elegant) statements of universal relevance and appeal." And such traits for America are: "affirmation in the face of adversity and improvisation in situations of disruption and discontinuity." Declarations like these made me very excited to read the rest of the book but I found that the author's outlook when it related to real artists' work was actually contradictory to the above statements.
With statements like the above, one would assume that the author would explain elements of the music, art, or literature which show how the artists molded idiomatic details, down-home conventions and provincial customs and folkways into their art but he never does this. Ever. For the rest of the entire book he gives detailed biographical accounts of five artists, what they did, where, and when, and completely lionizes them in the most florid language. The first four artists (Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Romare Bearden), I agree, are in congruence with the author's above aesthetic statements. It's only unfortunate that he could not or was unable to represent their art in line with his initial pronouncements, demonstrating folk elements of their art which are processed and stylized. Instead of focusing on the craftsmanship of their art, he measures their importance based on their national and international success and explains this is why they are so significant and important and why they represent America more than any other artist (see pages 79-96 for the worst examples). The author reveals himself to be hung-up on "importance" and international success, which is extremely unfortunate given that his vision of art stated above is so beautiful.
"The creative act is an effort to give enduring shape or pattern and meaning to the perpetual-seeming flux of ongoing experiences..." If one were to follow these thoughts through, people are in constant flux, ideals and ideas change. In the artistic realm, importance is irrelevant. The author lets the ego stand in the way of seeing the larger picture of what art is to the audience and so what is art's real significance, which is to put into abstract the aspects/feelings/pathos of human existence which cannot be felt/understood except by oblique/abstract means. Art is another way people approach and understand the world and it enriches their lives and makes them feel closer to "humanity" (whatever that means). An artist can only derive material from his or her own experiences and so one artist is not sufficient to carry the model of one nation's entire identity, much less the entire world's. The role of the artist is to make a contribution to a diversified whole. And this is evident in how people consume art. People are not exclusive in how they enjoy art. Most people don't go to a museum just to look at one picture by one artist and not visit any other exhibits, and they don't own only one album by one musician. They enjoy the diversity. And the differences between the works have meaning and function to each person. It's only in this diversity of art that people can get a true and deep understanding of "humanity."
Well, that's just my two-cents worth...
With statements like the above, one would assume that the author would explain elements of the music, art, or literature which show how the artists molded idiomatic details, down-home conventions and provincial customs and folkways into their art but he never does this. Ever. For the rest of the entire book he gives detailed biographical accounts of five artists, what they did, where, and when, and completely lionizes them in the most florid language. The first four artists (Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Romare Bearden), I agree, are in congruence with the author's above aesthetic statements. It's only unfortunate that he could not or was unable to represent their art in line with his initial pronouncements, demonstrating folk elements of their art which are processed and stylized. Instead of focusing on the craftsmanship of their art, he measures their importance based on their national and international success and explains this is why they are so significant and important and why they represent America more than any other artist (see pages 79-96 for the worst examples). The author reveals himself to be hung-up on "importance" and international success, which is extremely unfortunate given that his vision of art stated above is so beautiful.
"The creative act is an effort to give enduring shape or pattern and meaning to the perpetual-seeming flux of ongoing experiences..." If one were to follow these thoughts through, people are in constant flux, ideals and ideas change. In the artistic realm, importance is irrelevant. The author lets the ego stand in the way of seeing the larger picture of what art is to the audience and so what is art's real significance, which is to put into abstract the aspects/feelings/pathos of human existence which cannot be felt/understood except by oblique/abstract means. Art is another way people approach and understand the world and it enriches their lives and makes them feel closer to "humanity" (whatever that means). An artist can only derive material from his or her own experiences and so one artist is not sufficient to carry the model of one nation's entire identity, much less the entire world's. The role of the artist is to make a contribution to a diversified whole. And this is evident in how people consume art. People are not exclusive in how they enjoy art. Most people don't go to a museum just to look at one picture by one artist and not visit any other exhibits, and they don't own only one album by one musician. They enjoy the diversity. And the differences between the works have meaning and function to each person. It's only in this diversity of art that people can get a true and deep understanding of "humanity."
Well, that's just my two-cents worth...
September 14, 2007
the american aesthete
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews