YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN

by Dorothy Baker ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1938

A difficult book to place -- this fourth Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award. The story of Rick Martin, who, after he quits school at 12, hangs around colored jazz musicians and discovers in himself a rare, unusual, instinctive sense of music, first with the piano,then with the trumpet. Through his spontaneous, inspired, purely creative music, he rises to the top in swing, marries a perverse, neurotic girl of a completely different class, they break up and at 27 he dies from sheer physical ruin, from too long hours, drinking and continual high tension. There are some unusual features here, and whether you like jazz or not, is irrelevant, for the idea is that of Thomas Mann's Tonio Kroger, who worked with ""no regard for himself as a human being, but only as a creator"", and the picture of the force of this creative urge is a real thing. The feel of the book, the terse, rapid-fire lingo, an unusual use of metaphor, pack a real punch and make this award an interesting book to sell -- and read.

Pub Date: June 1, 1938

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Houghton, Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1938

Categories: FICTION