{"product_id":"young-man-with-a-horn-9781590175774","title":"Young Man with a Horn","description":"Rick Martin loved music and the music loved him. He could pick up a tune so quickly that it didn't matter to the Cotton Club boss that he was underage, or to the guys in the band that he was just a white kid. He started out in the slums of LA with nothing, and he ended up on top of the game in the speakeasies and nightclubs of New York. But while talent and drive are all you need to make it in music, they aren't enough to make it through a life. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Dorothy Baker's \u003ci\u003eYoung Man with a Horn\u003c\/i\u003e is widely regarded as the first jazz novel, and it pulses with the music that defined an era. Baker took her inspiration from the artistry--though not the life--of legendary horn player Bix Beiderbecke, and the novel went on to be adapted into a successful movie starring Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, and Doris Day.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDorothy Baker (1907-1968) was born in Missoula, Montana, in 1907 and raised in California. After graduating from UCLA, she traveled in France, where she began a novel and, in 1930, married the poet Howard Baker. The couple moved back to California, and Baker completed an MA in French, later teaching at a private school. After having a few short stories published, she turned to writing full time, despite, she would later claim, being \"seriously hampered by an abject admiration for Ernest Hemingway.\" In 1938, she published \u003ci\u003eYoung Man with a Horn\u003c\/i\u003e, which was awarded the prestigious Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1942 and, the next year, published \u003ci\u003eTrio\u003c\/i\u003e, a novel whose frank portrayal of a lesbian relationship proved too scandalous for the times; Baker and her husband adapted the novel as a play in 1944, but it was quickly shut down because of protests. Her final novel, \u003ci\u003eCassandra at the Wedding \u003c\/i\u003e(also published as an NYRB Classic), examined the relationship between two exceptionally close sisters, whom Howard Baker asserted were based on both Baker herself and the couple's two daughters. Baker died in 1968 of cancer. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Gary Giddins was the jazz critic for \u003ci\u003eThe Village Voice\u003c\/i\u003e, where his column \"Weather Bird\" ran for thirty years, and is presently director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He has contributed articles about music and movies to \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Nation\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eEsquire\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Sun\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eVanity Fair\u003c\/i\u003e, among others. He has written twelve books, including \u003ci\u003eVisions of Jazz\u003c\/i\u003e, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1998, and \u003ci\u003eBing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams\u003c\/i\u003e. His most recent book is \u003ci\u003eWarning Shadows: Home Alone with Classic Cinema\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"New York Review of Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50420997194002,"sku":"9781590175774","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_d92e5354-477c-45be-825a-84d43ea0a5a2.jpg?v=1729499923","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/young-man-with-a-horn-9781590175774","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}