Lester Young fading away in a hotel room; Charles Mingus storming down the roads of NY 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 contemporary jazz. He draws on photos and anecdotes, but music is the traveling pressure of But Beautiful and Dyer brings it to life in luminescent and wildly metaphoric prose that mirrors the quirks, eccentricity, and brilliance of every musician’s style.