Fascinating Rhythm: Reading Jazz in American Writing

by David Yaffe

How have American writers written about jazz, and how has jazz influenced American literature? In Fascinating Rhythm , David Yaffe explores the relationship and interplay between jazz and literature, looking at jazz musicians and the themes literature has garnered from them by appropriating the style, tones, and innovations of jazz, and demonstrating that the poetics of jazz has both been assimilated into, and deeply affected, the development of twentieth-century American literature.


Yaffe explores how Jewish novelists such as Norman Mailer, J. D. Salinger, and Philip Roth engaged issues of racial, ethnic, and American authenticity by way of jazz; how Ralph Ellison's descriptions of Louis Armstrong led to a "neoconservative" movement in contemporary jazz; how poets such as Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, Langston Hughes, and Frank O'Hara were variously inspired by the music; and how memoirs by Billie Holiday, Charles Mingus, and Miles Davis both reinforced and redeemed the red light origins of jazz. The book confronts the current jazz discourse and shows how poets and novelists can be placed in it--often with problematic results. Fascinating Rhythm stops to listen for the music, demonstrating how jazz continues to speak for the American writer.

Genres: Jazz, Music, Literary Criticism

232 pages, Hardcover

First published November 7, 2005

About the author

David Yaffe is assistant professor of English at Syracuse University and the author of Fascinating Rhythm: Reading Jazz in American Writing. He is a music critic for the Nation and has written articles for the Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan, the New York Times, Bookforum, New York Magazine, Slate, The New Republic, The Village Voice, and other publications.

Reviews

[Tosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This year, I have been reading many books on Jazz. I found (tragically, the late) David Yaffe's book of great interest. There needs to be a book focusing on Jazz seen through the French eyes and ears. I have so many books by French critics and musicians (Boris Vian and Andre Hodeir) on that subject matter. Still, it is a fascinating subject.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

priceless book for those interested in the cross-racial influences of america's art form, jazz. as well as those interested in the ways that jazz infused and inspired works of literature in the 20th century.

[Troy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this pretty repeatedly, finding numerous parallels with the modern day music critic in their attempt to explain hiphop. Jazz, however, has proven a lot more nuanced. This book tackles a couple of dissimilar elements in its analyses; where is the language to define jazz, to explain its rhythms and tone? What of the political of jazz; what can be said about the infusion of Jews into the culture? How do jazz musicians themselves attempt to shape their public image through the written word?

The reading list this inspired will take me a while to get through. Norman Mailer's "The White Negro" is a blueprint for modern day hipsters. Saul Bellow wanted to know, if greatness existed within the African tribes and their descendants, where was the Zulu Tolstoy? Lots to think about, and a lot to digest.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yaffe juxtaposes a wide range of provocative materials here (canonical and less-familiar American literary texts, classic jazz recordings, televised moments of performance) but his style is a little too breezy for my taste, seeming less like rigorous criticism and more like pleasantly engaging journalism.