Bass Cathedral by Nathaniel Mackey, Wilson Harris, Wilson Harris (Preface by)

From the Publisher

Los Angeles, October 1982: Molimo m'Atet, formerly known as the The Mystic Horn Society, is preparing to release its new album Orphic Bend. The members of the jazz ensemble-Aunt Nancy, Djamilaa, Drennette, Lambert, N., and Penguin-are witness to a strange occurrence: while listening to their test pressing, the moment Aunt Nancy's bass solo begins a balloon emerges from the vinyl, bearing a mysterious message: I dreamt you were gone.... Through letters N. writes to a figure called Angel of Dust, the ever-mutating story unfolds, leaving no musician or listener untouched.

The New York Times - David Hajdu

Episodic, unpredictable, often self-referential and sometimes self-absorbed, Bass Cathedral is a virtuoso performance done for the glory of performing. The satisfaction Bass Cathedral provides is that of the moment. It feels, sentence to sentence and page to page, like a work in the act of being created. It is not simply writing about jazz, but writing as jazz…There is a cliche about music writing, sometimes attributed to Thelonious Monk, among others: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." If so, Nathaniel Mackey is compelled, rather than deterred, by the multiform madness of the enterprise. He is the Balanchine of the architecture dance.

Publishers Weekly

In the fourth installment of this National Book Award-winning poet and novelist's ongoing epistolary work of fiction, Mackey (Splay Anthem) is never shy of the unwieldy or the recondite, plunging readers into the heady thoughts of N., narrating letter writer and member of the fictional early '80s jazz ensemble Molino m'Atet, who are releasing their first album, Orphic Bend. Like the plot points of Mackey's previous novels (which feature first concerts, new drummers and intra-band love triangles), the album release here serves mainly to trigger Mackey's singularly styled vamps on jazz and its mystical connotations. Mackey works in a kind of otherworldly reality, where recognizable situations quickly give way to the fanciful: the band, at one point, finds that cartoon speech balloons appear from the grooves of their album (as they appeared from the band's instruments in earlier installments), causing confusion among the band members and their fans. "I dreamt you were gone... " begin the balloons; from here, Mackey takes off into the wilds of abstraction and imagination. Less stridently avant-garde and more readable than its predecessors, this poetic novel is nonetheless dense and challenging. It may not be for everyone, but fans of Mackey's poetry, and of jazz, may find themselves right at home. (Jan.)

Product Details