Horn

Edgar Pool is the Horn, the greatest tenor saxophonist of his generation, the man who created bop and who has become a myth for younger musicians. The Horn lives no life but jazz, his nights are spent in the crowded nightclubs of New York where the wistful, throaty sounds of his saxophone speak of the desires and pasts of his audience. After being out-played for the first time by a younger man the Horn sets out to stumble through New York for the last time. As his friends and lovers search for him they remember his life, and try to find the truth of his brilliant and tragic career. The Horn is a brilliant evocation of the world of jazz and a vivid memorial to the musicians who created it.Review QuoteThis is a book you can return to again and again just for the writing alone... Holmes is a writer, not a musician, but somehow he captures the life of a jazz musician in the first half of the twentieth century... It should be on the reading list of anyone who cares about jazz.Review QuoteWelcome back into print. Apart from Edgar Pool himself, his immediate crisis and backstory, the novel's supporting characters and the different ways in which they have sustained or challenged him are vividly realized.Review QuoteThe writing is powerful, the story complex and the overall book a true inspiration. Read it.Biographical NoteJohn Clellon Holmes (1926-1988) was an American author, poet and professor, known as the 'quiet Beat' and a contemporary of Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg, with whom he was friends.One of the best jazz novels ever written, by John Clellon Holmes, a figure in the Beat literary movement of the mid 20th century.