From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate
Bedouin Hornbook, Djbot Baghostus's Run, Atet A.D.
2010
First Published
4.35
Average Rating
560
Number of Pages
Part of Series
The great American jazz novel of “such exquisite rhythmic lyricism” ( Bookforum ) by National Book Award Winner Nathaniel Mackey. From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Volumes 1-3 collects the first three installments― Bedouin Hornbook, Djbot Baghostus’s Run, and Atet A.D.―of Nathaniel Mackey’s genre-defying work of fiction. A project that began over thirty years ago, From a Broken Bottle is an epistolary novel that unfolds through N.’s intricate letters to the mysterious Angel of Dust. Unexpected, profound happenings take place as N. delves into music and art and the goings-on of his transmorphic Los Angeles-based jazz ensemble, in which he is a composer and instrumentalist. This triple-set book opens in July 1978 with a dream of a haunting Archie Shepp solo, and closes in September 1982 in a parallactic studio recording session on a glass-bottomed boat borne aloft by the music. The fourth volume of Mackey’s novel, Bass Cathedral ―also available from New Directions―was chosen by The New York Times as one of 100 Notable Books of 2008. But that it didn’t end there…
Avg Rating
4.35
Number of Ratings
48
5 STARS
67%
4 STARS
17%
3 STARS
6%
2 STARS
6%
1 STARS
4%
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Author
Nathaniel Mackey
Author · 15 books
Poet and novelist Nathaniel Mackey was born in 1947 in Miami, Florida. He received a BA degree from Princeton University and a PhD from Stanford University. Nathaniel Mackey has received numerous awards including a Whiting Writer’s Award and a 2010 Guggenheim fellowship. He is the Reynolds Price Professor of English at Duke University and served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2001 to 2007. Mackey currently lives in Durham, North Carolina.
