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Geoff Dyer is a writer of non-fiction, a critic of literature and music and film. But he is a fiction-writer too, and in But Beautiful [A Book About Jazz], he uses his fiction-writer tools to explore the world of jazz, offering a kind of criticism that is more memorable and more resonant than any critical essay could be.

The book consists of a series of fictionalized vignettes which reveal the personalities of a few geniuses of jazz: an aging Lester Young at the Alvin Hotel, Thelonious Monk and his wife Nellie in the West Sixties, the vicious beating (and resurrection) of Bud Powell, Ben Webster traveling Europe by train, the ever-angry, explosive Charlie Mingus, Chet Baker of the beautiful and ruined face, and the crazy junkie life of Art Pepper, all seven tied together by the road trip conversations of Duke Ellington and his chauffeur/baritone sax/old friend Harry Carney passing the time on the way to another gig.

If you’re not into classic jazz, you might as well skip this book, but if you know who the people listed above are, and you dig their music, I highly recommend this book.

Oh, there is an essay at the end, and it is a very good essay too, but I’ve forgot what it is about already. But I still remember the rest: courtly Lester walking with Lady Day, Monk introducing his favorite lamppost, bloody Bud Powell nightsticked on the sidewalk, Ben blowing his tenor for a stranger on the train, Mingus demolishing his phone, Chet Baker staring into an unforgiving mirror, junkie jailbird Art Pepper painting the portrait of a woman with his music.

And the Duke and Harry, of course, forever friends, forever on the road.