The Church of John Coltrane
"Jazz is restless, frustrated. Always attacking itself, taking itself apart. It has no basis in the everyday anymore. It doesn't reach out to you. It doesn't tell you anything. It just goes round and round in its own little world, noodling with its own personal references. And that's what's dangerous about it. It presents the listener with a false reality. It fragments perception. Jazz fucks you up..."
Auckland, New Zealand. Nearly 15 years after the events of Heaven, Robert Marling has finally blown it all. Bankrupted at the casino table and numbed by loss, he ducks his creditors and retreats into his dead father's apartment. Alone with a jazz collection, Robert seems to have finally achieved nothingness. But the strange silence of the maze-like building is soon interrupted by the music from a cool, forgotten world.
The Church of John Coltrane is a mystery about art, graffiti, endings, repetition, jazz, punk, west coast surfing and Shanghai lounge divas.
Reviews
"Ballade langoureuse [à nouveau situé dans la ville d'Auckland] qui s'interroge au passage sur les nouvelles mÏurs musicales, le nouvel opus de Chad Taylor dégage une atmosphère assez unique. Pas de doute, le Néo-Zélandais possède un son bien à lui."
-- Alexandre Fillon / Livres Hebdo - 08/05/2009
"Chad Taylor excelle à décrire l'espace urbain (Auckland), ses lieux confidentiels et arty, tenus à l'écart de la ville moderne. [...] L'écriture visuelle de Taylor, ses ruelles nocturnes et ses voies sans issue, renvoyant au monde underground des films de Cassavetes. [...] Errance urbaine/humaine aux faux airs de palimpseste, ce dernier né de Chad Taylor distille un goût d'inachevé, d'imperfection affirmée, qui renvoie aux heures anciennes de la contre-culture, à son charme fou."
-- Emily Barnett / Les Inrockuptibles - 19/05/2009
La quête d'une diva de jazz exotique
-- Le Temps
The Church of John Coltrane is published by Christian Bourgois. The novel is the sequel to Heaven, which was made into a feature film by Miramax in 1998.
Cover photograph: Sacha Maxim