 Don't
the Moon Look Lonesome : A Novel in Blues and Swing by
Stanley Crouch
Crouch's novel
tells the story of a mixed-race couple, both musicians, living
in New York City. Maxwell is a black sax player; Carla is a white
jazz singer. Their love for each other seems to transcend race--yet
the great American dilemma keeps interfering, and as they try
to gain acceptance from friends and family, jazz is the one thing
that soothes them. In a typical altercation, a black man in a
parking lot derides Carla as a "stringy-haired white girl."
But as she listens to Maxwell perform immediately afterward, the
very notes he plays seem like the best possible rebuttal, "more
masculine and more tender and more androgynous and more than male
or female or happy or sad or frightened or brave or knowing or
befuddled than anything she had ever heard her man play."
(Emily White, Amazon.com -- Read
More)
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