Birth of the Cool: Beat, Bebop, and the American Avant Garde

This is a pretty engrossing book - if you think you know about "cool" check it out. Lewis puts together stuff in avery original manner and helps one to get a perspectiveon what cool is.The section on DT Suzuki and cool caught my attention.The chapter was called "The Bodhisattvas of Cool." Did you know that Siddartha means , "He who accomplishes his goals."The layout of the book is cool and the type changes so things stay cool.

There is a new commercial on the air right now for, of all things, the new domain .tv. It is simply a procession of images: a dog, a skier, a fat guy in a swimming pool. The voice-over is simply a guys saying "cool," ot "not "cool" whenever a new image is revealed. as I watched it, I couldn't help but think, "what the hell happened to cool." When pretty much everything is cool, nothing is. Lewis MacAdams' book is thus pretty timely. He takes us back to the guys who really were cool. They were outlaws, outside the mainstream. Most people thought they were freak, but they didn't care because they were cool. Anyone who has read Macadams' poetry or journalism is awaere of his talents. It is about time he put them to something larger.