| Contents |
Preface. A cooler world -- The essence of cool -- A cool revolution -- The capital of the world -- The uncoolest thing in the world. "Bird was Bebop's spirit" -- "Dizzy was its head and its hands" -- Minton's University of Bebop -- Groovin' high -- "Heroin was our badge" -- The very architecture of cool -- The uncoolest thing in the world -- Breaking the ice. The rank outsider -- A hard lesson in the cool -- "Let Paris come to me" -- The technician of shock -- "It was a stampede" -- "Breaking the ice" -- Somewhere where it's cool. "This guy is the heat" -- A parallel universe -- Somewhere where it's cool -- The furthest thing from cool -- When cool and beat were one -- Vary uncool in Texas -- Cool's tragic shadow -- The Bodhisattvas of cool. A cool revolution -- "Understanding came later--or not at all" -- Silence -- The yen for Zen -- Signaling through the flames. Growing up absurd -- Cooler with a saint -- The white negroes -- Is this the way cool passes from black to white? Is this how cool enters the mainstream? -- "A cool play" -- The age of cool. "Cool on everything" -- Struggling to remain cool -- American cool -- Cool on everything. |
| Abstract |
The idea of 'cool' is one of the most pervasive forces in modern culture--but what is it? Where does it come from? Who invented it? This is the first serious examination of how cool came about--its meaning, its heroes and its place in the world, from the gritty avant-garde fringes of the culture in after-hours joints in Harlem and cold water flats on the Lower East Side, to the centre of the mainstream. Focusing on New York from 1948 to 1965 and bringing together the era's most evocative black and white photographs, the author takes us from the jazz joints where Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker invented bebop to Jackson Pollock's studio; from Willam S. Burrough's frenetic experiences on the road to the Black Mountain School of Zen. |
| Bibliography note | Includes filmography (pages 280-281), discography (page 281), bibliography (pages 270-280), and index. |
| LCCN | 00048253 |
| ISBN | 0684813548 |
