In his book "The Anxiety of Influence" the literary scholar Harold Bloom argues that only the strongest poets have been able to overcome the example of their foremost literary forebears. No one with the strength to surpass Coltrane - or get beyond his achievement - has emerged since his death. "The common wisdom about .
. . Coltrane," Ratliff writes, "is that he was the last major figure in the evolution of jazz, that the momentum of jazz stalled, and nearly stopped, after his death.
" "Common wisdom" is a tricky term. It's a way of insinuating something is false without coming right out and saying so. In this case, that serves a useful rhetorical function.
Ratliff is far too smart not to know that the common wisdom really is true - certainly, the first part of that statement is. Coltrane may not prove to be the last major figure in the evolution of jazz (let's hope not), but he has so far. That the immediacy and intensity of his example, both stylistic and personal, have clearly diminished is indisputable.
But that jazz has yet to produce a figure who even begins to approach his stature is equally indisputable. It doesn't require an acceptance of the great-man theory of jazz (something that Ratliff clearly rejects) to see in that failure a threat to the ongoing development of the music. So to accept the common wisdom risks casting doubt on the ongoing health of jazz.
In writing his book, Ratliff is offering something that is as much a vote of confidence in jazz to come as it is a study of one of the supreme figures of its past. Ratliff writes extremely well, with terse, assured brio, as when he refers to Coltrane's "serene intensity" or the "incantational tumult" of his vast, cathedral solos. With a single noun, Ratliff can express how different the "calligraphy" of Ornette Coleman's album "Free Jazz" is from Coltrane's late-period "Ascension.
" He can go overboard at times trying to locate Coltrane culturally. Noting that "Live at the Village Vanguard" was recorded the same year Dashiell Hammett and Ernest Hemingway died, Ratliff writes, "Now that hypermasculine American succinctness was eclipsed, camp could become a popular mode." Huh?
That's a rare straying, though, from the tight stylistic and intellectual control that marks Ratliff's book. The excesses of late Coltrane are nowhere to be found here, in either their sublimity or longueurs. But so much of its forcefulness, directedness, and striving are.
Mark Feeney is a member of the Globe staff. He can be reached at mfeeney@globe.com .
News RSS