introduction
About the photo
But beautiful
Reviews: Tradition, Influence, and Innovation
Acknowledgements
main
References
Recommended albums

Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, Britain's leading literary award


The life of a jazz musician, born anew through the combination of reality and fiction.

Lester Young slowly dying in his hotel room, Thelonious Monk getting his hands slapped by a cop while he's holding onto the steering wheel, Charles Mingus venting his anger on a battered bicycle through the streets of New York… … .
Jeff Dyer reconstructs the life of a struggling jazz musician through a series of anecdotes, drawing on the way he listened to music.
The main characters are representative musicians who led jazz in the 1940s and 1950s, such as Lester Young, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Ben Webster, Chet Baker, Art Pepper, and Duke Ellington.
It captures moments of self-destruction, sadness and loneliness, anxiety and emptiness, and downfall that emerge from alcohol, drugs, discrimination, and the arduous journey.
At that moment, jazz is born.

The anecdotes in this book are both real events and fiction created by the author.
Geoff Dyer describes his writing, which combines nonfiction and fiction, as "imaginative criticism."
Scenes in the book are based on well-known or legendary stories.
A representative example is the story of Chet Baker having all his teeth knocked out.
Such well-known repertoires are what jazz calls "standards," where the artist briefly mentions established facts and then improvises around them, sometimes creating his own version that completely departs from the facts.
Scenes that retain the formal privilege of improvisation appear like completely new 'original compositions'.


Jeff Dyer's unique way of inviting readers into the world of jazz.

The author does not present a chronological history of jazz or suggest methods of appreciation.
Instead, it invites readers into the world of jazz by describing, based on facts, what kind of lives jazz musicians lived and what style of music they created and played, along with some imagination.
Jeff Dyer didn't specify exactly what he was referring to when he included what someone actually said in the book.
Jazz musicians often quote other musicians in their solos.
Whether or not the listener notices the quotation depends on his or her musical knowledge.
Likewise, the events that appear in 『But Beautiful』 are things that have been changed beyond what was created or quoted, and they show not the musician's actual appearance, but the author's view.
For example, rather than depicting musicians solely through their work, the author portrays the lives of jazz musicians by projecting them onto the moment they first heard the music.
Therefore, it is entirely up to the reader to perceive the 'atmosphere' of jazz that this book presents.
There is no right answer or set answer here.
Just like jazz itself.


The story of Bud Powell, who suffered a nervous breakdown due to drug addiction, flows through his consciousness in a dreamlike hazy manner, while the story of Charles Mingus, who expresses his anger with his heavy body, changes scenes rhythmically.
Duke Ellington's story of spending countless hours on the road while touring is as free and romantic as his wanderings.
The sad and strange moment of craving drugs, being confined to mental hospitals and prisons, and ultimately being unable to even think of a life outside of music, is finally brought to life in Dyer's writing, and jazz begins to play in the still photographs.


Beautiful sentences embroidered by non-experts,
Music told through words

In this book, "But Beautiful," which begins with a tribute to John Berger, the author ironically states that not being able to play an instrument is actually a condition for being able to write, showing how a non-expert can embroider beautiful sentences among experts.
Just as John Berger describes scenes in words in greater detail than photographs in his book, Geoff Dyer presents music through words in this book.
With this, he once again proves that “Jeff Dyer is a genre.”
With this work, he won the Somerset Maugham Medal, a literary award representing the UK, and joined the ranks of world-renowned writers. He still enjoys a solid reputation as a writer beloved by writers such as Haruki Murakami and Alain de Botton.
This book was first introduced in Korea in 2013, but the regret over the translation followed it like a shadow.
Along with Jeff Dyer's photo critique collection, Moments of Duration, and the author's new work, Sea/Saw, which is being introduced in Korea for the first time, Eulyoo Publishing presents one of Jeff Dyer's anthologies, but beautiful, which has been translated by jazz critic Hwang Deok-ho to enhance its completeness.

“The best jazz photographs are full of the sounds of the people in them,” says Dyer.
For example, in Carol Leaf's photograph of Chet Baker on stage at Birdland, we hear not only the performer's voice within the frame of the small stage, but also the chatter and clinking of glasses that fill the nightclub.
"But Beautiful" is also filled with the voices of the protagonist in the text.
In the anecdotes of each musician, including Duke Ellington, Lester Young, and Art Pepper, the reader is not merely observed by the author, but is deeply immersed in their lives.
There, we hear the familiar commotion of life that is likely to be around us.