Jazz Fiction: Take Two

Jazz Fiction: Take Two is the sequel to Jazz Fiction: A History and Comprehensive Reader’s Guide (2008). The earlier work filled a pressing need in jazz studies by identifying and discussing 700 works of fiction with a jazz component. Take Two surveys over 500 newer works of jazz-inflected fiction that have appeared from the turn of the 21st century to the present. The essay-reviews at the heart of the book give readers a sense of the plot of each surveyed work and characterizes its debt to jazz. The entries are written with both general readers and scholars in mind and are intended to entertain as well as inform. This alone qualifies Jazz Fiction: Take Two as an original and useful resource. Sascha Feinstein, Founding Editor of Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz and Literature and several books on jazz, says of Jazz Fiction: Take Two: “With this companion volume to Jazz Fiction, David Rife enhances his position as an indispensable scholar of jazz-related fiction. The copious entries—each written not only with deft concision but irresistible linguistic flair—provide the kind of insight that only someone profoundly well-read in the genre could cultivate. One could not ask for a more delightful guide.”

Dave Rife is Professor Emeritus in English at Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where he taught for 35 years. He is the author of Jazz Fiction: A History and Comprehensive Reader's Guide (2008) and Jazz Fiction: Take Two (2022), co-editor of The Jazz Fiction Anthology (2009), and associate editor of Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz and Literature. In addition to his studies in jazz, he has published in such venues as Dictionary of Literary Biography, The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing, and American Literary Realism. A member of the Sault Ste. Marie tribe of Chippewa Indians, he divides his time in deep retirement between Florida and Pennsylvania while working on a study of the Anishnaabe Indian in modern American fiction.

Jim Langdon is a retired government administrator and part-time butcher from Leland, Wisconsin. He is the author of Mackinac Langdons Revisited (2015) and Probably of Interest to Only Me (2021), and editor of Great Lakes Chronicle: Essays on Coastal Wisconsin (2018), Jazz Fiction: Take Two (2022) and the annual Wisconsin Great Lakes Chronicle series (2002-present). He is a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians.