My Favorite Paragraphs

but beautiful: a book about jazz "Part of jazz is the illusion of spontaneity and Monk played the piano as though he'd never seen one before. Came at it from all angles, using his elbows, taking chops at it, rippling through the keys as if they were a deck of cards, fingers jabbing at them like they were hot to the touch or tottering around them like a woman in heels ---- playing it all wrong as far as classical piano went. Everything came out crooked, as an angle, not as you expected. If he'd play Beethoven, sticking exactly to the score, just the way he hit the keys, the angle in which his fingers touched the ivory, would have unsteadied it, made it swing and turn around inside itself, made it a Monk tune. Played with his fingers splayed, flattened out over the keys, fingertips almost like they were pointed upward when they should have been arched." (North Point Press, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, NY.  Page 39-40.)