Jazz

An inward face—whatever it sees is its own self. You are there, it says, because I am looking at you.

And what goes on on its blocks and lots and side streets is anything the strong can think of and the weak will admire.

Do what you please in the City, it is there to back and frame you no matter what you do.

At last, at last, everything’s ahead. The smart ones say so and people listening to them and reading what they write down agree: Here comes the new. Look out. There goes the sad stuff. The bad stuff. The things-nobody-could-help stuff. The way everybody was then and there. Forget that. History is over, you all, and everything’s ahead at last. In halls and offices people are sitting around thinking future thoughts about projects and bridges and fast-clicking trains underneath.

I’m strong. Alone, yes, but top-notch and indestructible—like the City in 1926 when all the wars are over and there will never be another one

A city like this one makes me dream tall and feel in on things. Hep. It’s the bright steel rocking above the shade below that does it.

Alone, yes, but top-notch and indestructible—like the City in 1926 when all the wars are over and there will never be another one

I wanted the work to be a manifestation of the music’s intellect, sensuality, anarchy; its history, its range, and its modernity.

Primary among these features, however, was invention. Improvisation, originality, change. Rather than be about those characteristics, the novel would seek to become them

Whatever the truth or consequences of individual entanglements and the racial landscape, the music insisted that the past might haunt us, but it would not entrap us.