Birth Of The Cool: Beat, Bebop, and the American Avant Garde
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.60 (879 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0684813548 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-02-02 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
what is cool? A Customer There is a new commercial on the air right now for, of all things, the new domain .tv. It is simply a procession of images: a dog, a skier, a fat guy in a swimming pool. The voice-over is simply a guys saying "cool," ot "not "cool" whenever a new image is revealed. as I watched it, I couldn't help but think, "what the hell happened to cool." When pretty much eve. "The Birth Of The Cool" according to Kindle Customer. Lewis MacAdams does an adequate job of detailing the "birth of the cool" providing biographical sketches of many of the coolest people to have lived. The list includes Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Lester Young, Jackson Pollock, and the Holy Trinity of Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs, among others. MacAdams book is a great introduction to all these figures, altho. A Customer said Cool is. This is a pretty engrossing book - if you think you know about "cool" check it out. Lewis puts together stuff in avery original manner and helps one to get a perspectiveon what cool is.The section on DT Suzuki and cool caught my attention.The chapter was called "The Bodhisattvas of Cool." Did you know that Siddartha means , "He who accomplishes his goals."The la
Pollock's comment that "technique is just a means of arriving at a statement" seems like something that could have come from any of the artists, musicians, or writers covered in this book. MacAdams has managed an homage to cool that temporarily conquers that "quicksilver nature" and gives us a lasting look at a nearly indefinable era. With numerous photos and pleasantly glossy paper, The Birth of Cool is a dense book that is both entertaining and depressing. MacAdams's background as a poet and film historian enables him to smoothly blend personal histories, public awareness, and political context into a fascinating exploration of the many facets of cool. As the story moves forward into the 1950s, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Arshile Gork
What do all these people have in common? Fame, of course, and undeniable talent. Allen Ginsberg suited up for Gap ads. Born of World War II, raised on atomic-age paranoia, cast out of the culture by the realities of racism and the insanity of the Cold War, cool is now, perversely, as conventional as you can get. Taking us inside the most influential and experimental art movements of the twentieth century -- from the Harlem jazz joints where Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker invented bebop to the back room at Max's Kansas City when Andy Warhol was holding court to backstage at the Newport Folk Festival the night Bob Dylan went electric, from Surrealism to the Black Mountain School to Zen -- MacAdams traces the evolution of cool from the very fringes of society to the mainstream. Miles Davis and Juliette Greco, Jackson Pollock and Jack Kerouac, Marlon Brando and Bob Dylan and William Burroughs. From intimate interviews with cool icons like poet Allen Ginsberg, bop saxophonist Jackie McLean, and Living Theatre cofounder Judith Malina, award-winning journalis