Jazz can be uplifting, stimulating, sensual, and spiritual. Yet
when writers turn to this form of music, they almost always imagine
it in terms of loneliness. In Blue Notes: Jazz, Literature, and
Loneliness, Sam V. H. Reese investigates literary representations
of jazz and the cultural narratives often associated with it,
noting how they have, in turn, shaped readers' judgments and
assumptions about the music. This illuminating critical study
contemplates the relationship between jazz and literature from a
perspective that musicians themselves regularly call upon to
characterize their performances: that of the conversation. Reese
traces the tradition of literary appropriations of jazz, both as
subject matter and as aesthetic structure, in order to show how
writers turn to this genre of music as an avenue for exploring
aspects of human loneliness. In turn, jazz musicians have often
looked to literature- sometimes obliquely, sometimes centrally- for
inspiration. Reese devotes particular attention to how several
revolutionary jazz artists used the written word as a way to
express, in concrete terms, something their music could only allude
to or affectively evoke. By analyzing these exchanges between music
and literature, Blue Notes refines and expands the cultural meaning
of being alone, stressing how loneliness can create beauty,
empathy, and understanding. Reese analyzes a body of prose writings
that includes Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and midcentury short
fiction by James Baldwin, Julio CortA!zar, Langston Hughes, and
Eudora Welty. Alongside this vibrant tradition of jazz literature,
Reese considers the autobiographies of Duke Ellington and Charles
Mingus, as well as works by a range of contemporary writers
including Geoff Dyer, Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, and Zadie
Smith. Throughout, Blue Notes offers original perspectives on the
disparate ways in which writers acknowledge the expansive side of
loneliness, reimagining solitude through narratives of connected
isolation.
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