The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Atet by Nathaniel Mackey
Eckhard Gerdes

Nathaniel Mackey. Atet A.D. City Lights, 2001. 184 pp. Paper: $13.95.

Do you remember how, back in those days, when everyone was partying real heavy, there were always a few cats who weren’t puttin’ the eye on the caboodles, who weren’t mainlining the beer from the half-barrel tube, but who were there for the music? You could be sitting there talking with one of those cats and he’d be right there until “Unbroken Chain” or “Lester Leaps In” came on, and then he’d be gone—his eyes would roll back in his head, he’d shiver, and then he’d be off-flying a pterodactyl to a beach party hosted by LBJ’s daughter. You’d say, “Damn! Let me have what he’s had,” but you’d already had it. It was just that he could really hear the music in a way you couldn’t. He could see it, smell it, taste it, touch it. Music was his object. That cat is the narrator of this epistolary novel (third in the series From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate). He’s a tenor sax player in an exploratory jazz quintet called “Molimo M’atet” for whom playing is transcendent, an astral-plane rider whose music leads to grand abstractions, delineating a landscape both hallucinatory and Eastern mystic. This precarious balance between abstract and concrete makes the novel like riding in Atet (the morning boat) through the cloud of unknowing with linguistics as the only paddle and style as the compass. It is some of the most intense, visionary writing about music that I’ve ever seen. It challenges, it treads, it flies, and it crawls. It’s as abstract as the heart of music itself and as concrete as a bicycle crashing to the pavement. [Eckhard Gerdes]