Nathaniel Mackey: BASS CATHEDRAL

183 pp. New Directions. Paper, $16.95.
Paper, 224pp., $16.95
ISBN 978-0811217200

The Great American Jazz Novel by Nathaniel Mackey, winner of the 2006 National Book Award


Bass Cathedral is Mackey's fourth volume in his ongoing novel with no beginning or end, From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate. Thought balloons morph into mute-stereoptic emanations; N. encounters a master mouthpiece-maker; Drennette leaves Penguin dateless; Lambert's kicking it around with Melanie--much is abuzz but something else is happening to the ensemble. The music seems to be living them. N. suffers cowrie shell attacks and they are all stranded on an Orphic Shore. Socio-political forces are at play or has this always been the essence and accident of the music's resilience? And Hotel Didjeridoo must be resurrected, but how? Myth spins music spins thought spins sex--Mackey's post-bop boxless box set is, as the Utne Reader wrote, "Avant-garde literature you can love: an evolving multivolume novel of the jazz world that plays with language and ideas the way Thelonious Monk plays with flatted fifths."

NATHANIEL MACKEY is the author of several books of poetry, fiction, and criticism; edits the literary journal Hambone; and is the host of a legendary radio show of jazz and world music in Santa Cruz called "Tanganyika Strut." A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, he is Professor of Literature at the University of California at Santa Cruz. His book Splay Anthem is the winner of the 2006 National Book Award for Poetry.

Date of publication: 2008