robertlevin
robertlevin
| Forum role | Member since | Last activity | Topics created | Replies created |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Member | Jul 25, 2008 (18 years) |
2 years | 2 | 0 |
- Forum role
- Member
- Member since
Jul 25, 2008 (18 years)
- Last activity
- 2 years
- Topics created
- 2
- Replies created
- 0
Bio
Robert Levin is a writer whose work defies easy categorization. His fiction plunges into the darkest corners of human consciousness with unflinching honesty and mordant wit. (Much of it laugh-out-loud funny, he’s been described as a “satirist sui generis.”) His commentary — mostly, like his fiction, transgressive and focused on the ways we deal with our mortality — challenges comfortable assumptions about psychology, religion and the whys and wherefores of aberrant human behavior. His jazz writing captures the revolutionary spirit of the 1960s music scene with passion and insight.
A former contributor to the Village Voice and Rolling Stone, Levin’s work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. He is the author of multiple collections and the coauthor and coeditor, respectively, of Music & Politics and Giants of Black Music, two important books on jazz and rock in the 1960s.
As for Levin’s style (in much of his fiction and nonjazz commentaries), one reviewer put it this way: “Baroque yet controlled, abrasive yet musical, its humor working as both shrield and scapel”
Levin’s jazz articles come from an insider perspective. As a young critic attending concerts during an era when “a seismic change in human consciousness” felt both possible and imminent, he witnessed and documented the birth of Free Jazz and the avant-garde movement firsthand.
His jazz works explore the spiritual and transformative dimensions of the music, particularly the innovations of pioneers like Cecil Taylor, Sunny Murray, Jimmy Lyons and Anthony Braxton. Critics have noted that they are “engaging and rich with detail,” offering “wonderful behind the scenes tales” delivered in a tone that brings the music and the moment vividly to life. His jazz essays and interviews have appeared in numerous music publications like Downbeat, Metronome and Jazz & Pop, earning him recognition as a writer who brings both intellectual rigor and a genuine love for the art to his work. Nat Hentoff called Levin “a writer from whom I always learn something.”
His latest collection, Going Outside, which gathers fiction, essays and pieces on jazz, has received five-star reviews, with critics praising its intellectual sharpness, fearless humor and philosophical perspicacity. — Eleanor Breitel
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