This volume is a collection of essays by various contributors in honor of the late Laurence Berns, Richard Hammond Elliot Tutor Emeritus at St. John's College, Annapolis. The essays address the literary, political, theological, and philosophical themes of his life's work as a scholar, teacher, and constant companion of the "great books." Included are essays interpreting biblical books, as well as books by Homer, Herodotus, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, Virgil, Dante, Spinoza, Milton, Rousseau, Darwin, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Camus, and H.G. Wells. Like their honoree, the essayists aim at understanding such books as their authors wished them to be understood-for the light they shed on universal and timeless questions about God, nature, and human life which animated the authors themselves and which they saw fit to share, elegantly and eloquently, with thoughtful readers. Each essay is, in its way, a model of how to read and reflect on the writings of the great authors.

"David Yaffe's "Fascinating Rhythm" is a marvelously evocative celebration of the interrelationships between modern American writing and jazz, which is in itself the outstanding American contribution to the arts, at least since Walt Whitman. I find particularly poignant the understanding that Ralph Ellison's true sequel to his "Invisible Man" was his poetics of jazz."--Harold Bloom

"This is a fascinating and formidable response to Ralph Ellison's famous call for a 'jazz-shaped' reading of American literature. Yaffe's bold and often brilliant treatments of black-Jewish relations in twentieth-century U.S. culture, Ellison's own seminal works, poetry and jazz influences, and the autobiographies of Mingus, Holiday, and Miles Davis are major contributions to American and Afro-American studies."--Cornel West, Princeton University

""Fascinating Rhythm" is an extremely absorbing and compelling demonstration of the key part jazz played in the construction of literary modernism. The book demonstrates an unusually mature intellectual self-possession and great analytic insight into U.S. cultural history, particularly the area of race and music. Yaffe is on his way to becoming one of the most notable public and scholarly writers of his generation."--Eric Lott, University of Virginia, author of "Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class"

"David Yaffe's "Fascinating Rhythm" does not simply fill a gaping vacuum in contemporary literary studies. It is likely to become the canonical text on jazz and literature, radically influencing all future writing on the subject. Each chapter is unique in its approach and sheds new light on books and poems we thought we knew."--KrinGabbard, State University of New York

"Written with a combination of vigor and shrewdness that is rare in jazz studies, "Fascinating Rhythm" possesses a clarity of argument that is both inviting and provocative. Yaffe captures the flavor of the jazz musicians and writers he covers--something of the elegance of Ralph Ellison, the saltiness of Miles Davis, and the bristle and energy of Charles Mingus."--Scott Saul, University of California, Berkeley

"Yaffe is one of the best informed--probably the best--of the younger scholars working in the relationship of jazz and the arts. His writing is clear, his descriptions evocative, and his comments judicious and shrewd. This is a book that should be read by serious students of America's arts, including the jazz scholars, and those in literature, American history, and American studies."--John Szwed, Yale University