Overview

In eight poetically charged vignettes, Geoff Dyer skillfully evokes the music and the men who shaped modern jazz. Drawing on photos, anecdotes, and, most important, the way he hears the music, Dyer imaginatively reconstructs scenes from the embattled lives of some of the greats: Lester Young fading away in a hotel room; Charles Mingus storming down the streets of New York on a too-small bicycle; Thelonious Monk creating his own private language on the piano. However, music is the driving force of But Beautiful, and wildly metaphoric prose that mirrors the quirks, eccentricity, and brilliance of each musician's style.

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9781665228046

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Reviews

Top-shelf performance . . . Dion Graham delivers the kind of listening experience that you'll want to hear in one sitting.-- AudioFile A masterful effort, which comes as close to the music's essence as prose can go. -- San Francisco Chronicle Achingly gorgeous. -- Entertainment Weekly May be the best book ever written about jazz. -- Los Angeles Times The written equivalent of a jazz performance...[Dyer] has created an unforgettable melody of his own. -- Atlanta Journal Consitution With his wide range of dialects and exceptional ability to immerse himself in a story, Dion Graham delivers the kind of listening experience that you'll want to hear in one sitting and in the dark--a slowly unfolding tableau of moody characters and difficult times...Lifted by Graham's performance, this is an incomparable window onto the world of jazz in mid-century America. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award. -- AudioFile

Author Information

"Geoff Dyer is the author of several novels, a critical study of John Berger, and numerous genre-defying books, including Out of Sheer Rage, which was a National Book Critics Circle finalist. Dion Graham is an award-winning narrator named a ""Golden Voice"" by AudioFile magazine. He has been a recipient of the prestigious Audie Award numerous times, as well as Earphones Awards, the Publishers Weekly Listen Up Awards, IBPA Ben Franklin Awards, and the ALA Odyssey Award. He was nominated in 2015 for a Voice Arts Award for Outstanding Narration. He is also a critically acclaimed actor who he has performed on Broadway, off Broadway, internationally, in films, and in several hit television series. He is a graduate of Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts, with an MFA degree in acting."

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