Beneath the Underdog (English)

Part novella, part autobiography, BENEATH THE UNDERDOG is the legendary jazz bassist and composer Charles Mingus's eccentric history of himself. He cracks his head on the bedroom dresser when he is two, becomes a teenage pimp, and shares a California bandstand with trumpeter Miles Davis, saxophonist Charlie Parker, and pianist Dodo Marmarosa. There are tequila-fueled trips to Mexico, love affairs, and nervous breakdowns; but most of all there is music. Mingus's individualistic style borrows much from the stream-of-consciousness approach of Beat authors such as Jack Kerouac, and parts of BENEATH THE UNDERDOG are reminiscent of Kerouac's lyrical flights of fancy as he describes listening to jazz. But Mingus's descriptions of actually playing the music are always rooted in the earthy back and forth of bandstand banter, and the gritty reality of a musician's day-to-day existence. BENEATH THE UNDERDOG is best approached as an improvisation on an autobiographical theme--Mingus bends, twists, and exaggerates the facts of his life until the book becomes a quirky self-portrait: brilliant and contradictory, but always vital. minimize