Lester Young fading away in a hotel room; Charles Mingus storming down the streets of New York on a too-small bicycle; Thelonius Monk creating his own private language on the piano... In eight poetically charged vignettes Geoff Dyer skilfully evokes the embattled lives of the players who shaped modern jazz. He draws on photos & anecdotes but music is the driving force of But Beautiful & Dyer brings it to life in luminescent & wildly metaphoric prose that mirrors the quirks eccentricity & brilliance of each musicians style.