Sonny Clark: A New Piece in Tin House #50

The Cover, Tin House #50, the Beauty issue. Winter '11-'12.

I’ve got a new piece Sonny Clark: Melody and Melancholy* in the ‘11-’12 Winter issue of Tin House magazine, #50, the “Beauty,” issue.  Earlier this year I wrote two pieces about Clark for Paris Review Daily (Pt. One and Two).  This piece features new material about the black-owned hotel in Herminie #2, PA where Clark grew up outside Pittsburgh, an interview with a longtime bartender at the Five Spot in NYC, references to the work of August Wilson, A.B. Spellman, and Nat Hentoff, and comments from novelist Haruki Murakami about Clark’s popularity in Japan.  I also included an analysis of the Japanese symbols often used to describe Clark’s music.  A book on Clark could be down the road.

*My wife Laurie, who grew up just a few miles from Herminie #2, came up with the subtitle for this piece, which Tin House accepted.

Update:  The New Yorker’s Richard Brody commented on this Tin House piece in his New Yorker blog today. 11/28/11.