April 19–26, 2001

book quicks

Birth of the Cool: Beat, Bebop, and the American Avant-Garde

By Lewis MacAdams
The Free Press, 288 p., $27.50

Lewis MacAdams’ Birth of the Cool is a remarkable examination of the alluring quality that so many wish to embody but so few actually possess. It chronicles key personifications of cool in the disciplines of art, music and literature with peripheral influences that reinforce each chapter’s analysis. Precise historical perspective coalesces with an engaging narrative flow to achieve an altogether triumphant dissertation on a mindset’s permeation of mid-20th century popular culture.

MacAdams formally commences his dissection of cool with the noted posturings of such iconoclasts as Charlie "Bird" Parker, Jackson Pollock, William S. Burroughs and John Cage, intensively deconstructing their respective netherworlds as well as their primal co-conspirators. Though the book touches on the usual suspects — Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan —it also picks out an eclectic assortment who are perhaps not instantly recognizable, but nonetheless precedent-setting. Dorothy Day, the renegade of integrity behind the Catholic Worker organization, was arrested in her late 50s for protesting President Eisenhower’s "Operation Alert" program, a mandatory preparation of citizens in response to the threat of nuclear war. D.T. Suzuki, a septuagenarian Buddhist scholar, opened the nation’s eyes to the religion in the early 1950s; its acolytes included Cage and Jack Kerouac, the latter of whom, after an encounter with Suzuki in 1958, declared, "I would like to spend the rest of my life with you."

MacAdams has an inspired gift for interjecting relevant historical digressions into his biographical profiles, enhancing the multitude of life stories in the process. The author also has a Robert Altman-esque knack for orchestrating his cast of characters through a deliberately disjointed narrative; it may seem as though certain subjects are afforded more space than others, but his perceptive, masterfully choreographed style leaves the reader with resonant impressions of each figure’s significance within the ethos of cool.

If there is any fault to be found with MacAdams’ riveting assessment, it’s the somewhat annoying propensity for using boldface type to promote many of his insights. More often than not, this device is superfluous, since his material is already evocative as it is, and, just like the overriding concept of cool dictates, it doesn’t need to draw attention to itself.

Provocative, incredibly vivid and confidently written, Birth of the Cool is more than hip enough for the room.

—Frank Halperin