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Article: Straight, No Chaser: The Life and Genius of Thelonius Monk.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- The Antioch Review
- Article date:
- June 22, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Antioch Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Monk by Laurent de Wilde. Marlow & Company, 214 pp., $22.95. Straight, No Chaser: The Life and Genius of Thelonious Monk by Leslie Gourse. Schirmer Books, 340 pp., $27.00. In many ways a biographer is like a jazz musician. Like two improvisations on the same standard tune, two writers may take the raw material of a life and mold, shape, and caress it into a form that reflects both subject and author. Two recent biographies of Thelonious Monk demonstrate that whatever approach one takes to describing the pianist's life, Monk is certainly one of the greats of the jazz genre. Monk, who lived from 1917-1982, gave the world a wonderfully quirky piano technique, a beautifully ...