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Today, “Viper's Dream” by Jake Lamar, published on September 15, 2021 by Éditions Payot & Rivages.
Ju lit les Mots, contributor to the
20 Minutes
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reading group
, recommends
Viper's Dream
by Jake Lamar, published on September 15, 2021 by Éditions Payot & Rivages.
Her favorite quote:
White traders fear you given the corrections you gave them with impunity. Blacks love you for the same reasons. And they fear you too. All the dealers, they're black. They say to themselves that if you can hit white people without getting in trouble, you would be even harder on those of the same people as you.
Why this book?
Because Clyde Morton, 19, arrived in New York
from the depths of Alabama, his head full of dreams of glory, persuaded to be a great jazz trumpeter, sees his dream crumble from the first audition in a Harlem club.
Instead, he will become the undisputed master of marijuana.
The "viper", so nicknamed in Harlem, is spreading at full speed.
Clyde is reborn as a marijuana dealer and becomes one of Harlem's most powerful gangsters.
Because we discover the fate of a man, of a community,
over a period from 1936 to 1961, through a story at a frantic pace, of an incredible density, filled with murders, drugs, cops rascals and crooked lawyers.
Because the narrative axis revolves around
Viper's
three
dearest
wishes
, which Baroness Pannonica asks him to record in a notebook, while on that night at the end of November 1961, he has just killed for the third time.
His mind blurs, wanders off the memories, to finally reveal the identity of his victim.
Because Viper's confession, borrowing from melancholy,
reveals these great musicians who play with death, but also those who will succumb to excessive drug or marijuana consumption.
Because it is a dense detective story, with a harsh taste,
with a rough pen, which highlights the world of jazz, the birth of Be-bop, with the backdrop of the Second World War, the place of Afro- Americans, but above all the evolving American society.
It's Harlem, its nightclubs, its artists, the jazzmen, its girls offered until the end of the night, to the rhythm of jazz.
An ode to jazz and its evolution.
Because until the end, Jake Lamar scrambles the tracks
, to finally end in apotheosis with an excellent double rebound, which one does not suspect, revealing a drama worthy of the greatest Greek tragedies.
Because Jake Lamar inaugurates with this book the
New York Made in France
series where, in the middle of a hundred cats, we meet, Duke Ellington, Theolonius Monk and Charlie Parker, at Baroness Pannonica De Koenigswater (baptized Cathouse by the regulars ), which supports jazzmen and welcomes them on the banks of the Hudson.
The essentials in 2 minutes
The plot.
1936, Clyde arrives in Harlem with his trumpet.
He will drop the instrument to become "The Viper", a drug lord.
Between Harlem and 52nd Street, marijuana is all the rage among the "black cats", the musicians Clyde rubs shoulders with.
We are witnessing the emergence of bebop and the ravages of heroin.
Characters.
Clyde "Viper" Morton, powerful Harlem boss.
Baroness Pannonica, aristocrat of the Rotschild family, who became the scandalous baroness of jazz.
we meet Duke Ellington, Theolonius Monk and Charlie Parker.
Viper's henchmen but also Mr O, the Jewish kingpin who put his foot in the stirrup ...
Places.
Harlem, Paris, Los Angeles.
The time.
From 1936 to 1961.
The author.
Born in the Bronx in New York, a graduate of Harvard University, Jake Lamar has been living in Paris since 1993. He is professor of creative writing at Sciences Po. Author of seven novels, an autobiographical account, numerous essays and articles and a play.
This book was read with
frenzy to the languid rhythm of jazz, until the final, masterful twist, of which I would have liked to read a good hundred more pages.
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Jazz
Polar
Book sheet 20 Minutes
United States
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