The title of this novel, taken from one of the seminal works of tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, a god in the jazz world, is perhaps a clue to the writer’s intent. For anyone immersed in jazz as a listener, as I have been for the last 8 or 9 years, there is always the problem of how to explain its attraction to non-enthusiasts. Like other forms of music, there is a barrier presented by language which prevents an easy articulation of what that world holds.
Omar Snow, the novel’s protagonist, is presented as a man who has given up most of the material comforts of life to write a book that, on the surface, is a musical biography of three jazz giants: the idiosyncratic pianist, Thelonius Monk, the mercurial bassist and bandleader Charles Mingus, and the mystical and ineffable John Coltrane. While the first two thirds of the book proceed relatively smoothly, Omar’s problems begin as he works on the Coltrane segment. He becomes obsessed with trying to convey in words the essentially indescribable: Coltrane’s musical vision. In his own way, Omar is trying to do in prose what Coltrane did in his music: capture and convey a world beyond the quotidian one that we know, a world where light, God and harmony exist, a world to which we can aspire but never fully achieve.
During this journey, Omar meets Carrie, a beautiful but unhappy actress neighbor with whom he seems to have little in common but to whom he is drawn; while the relationship never develops into a sexual one, Omar is convinced that he has a role to play in her life, although that role is never clearly defined. In reading the novel, I couldn’t help but feel that his inability to articulate the nature of his relationship with the actress is somehow a parallel to the problems he is having in describing the visionary nature of Coltrane’s music.
Ultimately, it is difficult to assess whether or not the novel is a success. As a jazz enthusiast, I found it for the most part compelling, but I’m not sure that a person for whom this music is passé or inaccessible would necessarily appreciate it as much
