The Origins of Cool in Postwar America Hardcover – May 17, 2017

I loved this book. It kind of brought together all things cool. My father had that vibe and that is what I look for in a man. I also admire black culture and have picked up on their people handling skills. And jazz is my jam. It does so much for my sense of wellness.

I am using my real name as author of this review in case anyone wants to question my musical background. What is particularly amazing to me about “The Origins of Cool in Postwar America” is that it is a major academic work, extensively researched and rigorously annotated, yet not written in “academese,” but in a clear and often compelling style easily understandable to those of us without Pd.D.s Dinerstein locates the birth of cool with the style of the great jazz saxophonist Lester Young. Young was subject to horrific racism during his time in the Army during World War II. He had already developed a signature style before then: a vibrato-less sound (unusual for big band saxophonists of that time) as well as an amazing use of pause and even silence during his solos. However, after WWII, in response to the oppression he was subjected to, he developed a calm, relaxed performance style very unlike the “hot” big band soloists of his day, which Lester and his friends labelled as “cool.” Dinerstein then documents the roots of this style in West African musical practice as well as the survival strategy of house slaves in the antebellum south. This style had an immediate influence on his jazz colleagues. In subsequent chapters of the book, Dinerstein documents the profound influence this style of jazz had on international culture, including literature, philosophy, film and theater. My personal favorite is Allen Ginsburg’s admission that “’Howl’ is all “Lester Leaps In.’” Then, in the pivotal later chapter on Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins, Dinerstein has the chutzpah to ask the question: given the obvious influence that the “cool” style in jazz had in the world, why isn’t it recognized as such? The answer, which even non-black academics shy away from, despite academia being one of the last bastions of radical liberalism, is of course: racism. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a friend of Joel’s. However, even if I weren’t, I would still highly recommend this book not only for jazz lovers, but for anyone interested in a keen insight into the nature of American society.

I enjoyed this fairly well written and edited book because I am very interested in the period and individuals covered. The author makes a number of interesting points, although sometimes at too great a length and with too much repetition. I appreciated the many excellent recommendations for period music, films and books. That said, however, I don't have enormous trust in someone who thinks Dave Brubeck is a saxophone player (as mentioned in the notes section), although perhaps (and hopefully) this was an error by a research assistant or editor.

Anyone interested in the history of jazz, film noir, or existential philosophy in the middle of the 20th century would find this book fascinating. The author is extremely knowledgeable and imaginative, and the result is one fascinating insight after the next. The prose is also highly accessible. One of the best books I have read in a number of years (and I read a lot).

This is one of the deepest and finest American cultural histories I have ever read. Dinerstein has mastered his subjects -- jazz, literature, film, politics. He weaves these subjects together like a master. I can't recommend this book more highly. You will learn a tremendous amount about this country by reading The Origins of Cool in Postwar America.

A bit of history, culture of the times, jazz & film noir - a good title for a comprehensive view of all things 'cool'.

Book is cool but arrived damaged as always from Amazon. It made me think 3 times before I buy books from Amazon especially those shipped by Amazon.

Sorry, I can’t agree with the many glowing reviews. But let me start with the positives as I see them:1. The chapter on Lorraine Hansberry almost redeems all the book’s other flaws. Great, unforgivably forgotten American. I recommend reading the book for this chapter alone.2. The same is true, to a lesser extent, for the sections on Lester Young and Billie Holiday.3. Beyond this, Dinerstein makes occasionally interesting connections between the people he covers. But boy - do we really need more verbiage about such figures as Sartre, Brando, Kerouac, Dean, and Presley? Is it really of any interest to read that Dean looked like Camus?So on to the negatives:1. Like a number of books written by academics these days, “Cool” is highly repetitive. Is this because it was largely assembled from lectures and essays?2. Again like a number of academic authors these days, Dinerstein can’t get enough of sentences like “What if postwar intellectuals then only beginning to understand their own feelings of exile, their need for de-and reconstruction, were drawn to a musical form ontologically created to produce on the wing since they were assuaging their own feelings of anomie?”. But, unlike most academics, and because he is after all writing a book about cool, he also resorts to such slang as “he sure could”, “he sure knew”, and “still and all”. On either end of the spectrum, it’s simply awful prose.3. Dinerstein writes with a curled lip about such aspects of the fifties as “the markers of social progress [that] came through a steady flow of new products and gadgets into the home, the daily guarantors of convenience and pleasure (e.g., cars, phones, television, washer/dryers, stereos)”.Tell me, Professor, which of these products do you not use?And , purely by happenstance, I just came across this passage from Robert Caro’s Lyndon Johnson biography. It’s long, but worth quoting in full: “Decades after electric power had become part of urban life, farmers still had to perform every farm chore by hand; their wives had to haul up endless buckets of water from wells, and, without the vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, washing machines, and electric irons that had freed city women from much of the drudgery of housework, worked from dawn to dusk as if they were peasant women in the Middle Ages”.Who’s the more serious writer: Dinerstein or Caro?4. At least to this reader, Dinerstein’s discussion of the supposed significance of the term “daddy-o”; his valorization of sunglasses; and his rapturous and extended analysis of why wearing all black is utterly profound on so many levels - all are just hopelessly silly. As is his description of Brando as “a sexualized Sisyphus of the soul” (really!).5. As another reviewer has noted, Dinerstein writes that Dave Brubeck was a saxophonist. He also asserts, in a discussion of the film “The Third Man”, that “it is narrated in the present tense by a British inspector”. These are both clearly just careless mistakes - Dinerstein knows that Brubeck was a pianist, and that the book of “The Third Man”, not the film, is narrated by a British inspector. But two such howlers, in a book published by the University of Chicago press, is exactly two too many.6. Dinerstein devotes considerable space to films that were and remain awful, unimportant, and uninfluential (e.g., King Creole, The Fugitive Kind, and Paris Blues). The only possible justification for this is that they fit with his thesis - which is not justification enough for this reader to want to waste time on them.At the end of the day, my guess is that this was an easy book for Dinerstein to write from the comfort of his intellectual E-Z-Boy recliner. It didn’t involve wrestling with any new or challenging ideas or issues, nor does it ask the serious reader to do so. So: Professor, how about including with this book in your next class Lous Menand’s “The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War” and/or Christopher Lasch’s “The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations”? Thinking outside your current box just might be the coolest thing you could do.

Very informative about an era/topic of interest.