Book Review-Mitchell and Ruff By William Zinsser

A understated book that led to many digressions.

This is a somewhat obscure book, I found out about it as I was diving into William Zinsser and the books that he had written about 20 years ago. If the author’s name sound familiar, he wrote the classic writing book On Writing Well (Zinsser, 2001). Zinsser was not just a proselytizer of the craft of writing, he was also a fantastic practitioner of the non-fiction writing craft, as this book demonstrates.

I had initially bought the book twenty years ago, after I had read On Writing Well. I bought it and forgot about it, until I dipped back into Zinsser and writing. Fortunately, I found the book amongst my boxes. Prior to that, I dug into two articles which served as the opening and closing chapters of this book, they were articles that Zinsser had published in the New Yorker magazine in the 1980’s. I became really interested after having read the two magazine articles.

This is an extraordinary story of two black men coming from the deep south to form a musical and professional partnership. Improbably, they also became well known as more than entertainers, they made it their mission to be educators about their passion for jazz.

The book is divided into seven chapters, the first and last chapters: Shanghai and Venice, were previously published in the aforementioned New Yorker articles. Chapters two and three are devoted to Mitchell’s life prior to meeting Ruff, and Ruff’s life prior to meeting Mitchell. The fourth chapter is the story of how they met in the army, and how they managed to attain their musical knowledge and stature through sheer hard work, the story of their partnership, as well as how their professional lives prospered. It is a remarkable story, especially since both came from nowhere. Ruff ended up being an academic at Yale, after having studied there under Paul Hindemith, that story is fascinating.

The fifth chapter details a specific trip they made to Davenport Iowa, to give the reader a taste of what they do to promote their beloved jazz music amongst those who had not been exposed to the beauty and spontaneity of the musical form. Chapter 6 is devoted to Dwike Mitchell and his life story, and a remarkable story it is, the best kind of story.

The final chapter, Venice, is the one that completely captured my heart and mind, both when I read it as a New Yorker article and as I re-read it at the end of the book. It was about Willie Ruff following his curiosity about the connections between classical music, jazz music, and history of both. This was a master class in connecting the ancient liturgical music, the composers of that music, and the architecture of the cathedral that inspired the music. The story is about how Willie Ruff talked his way to play music in St. Mark’s cathedral in Venice after the church had closed for the evening. He was able to freely experiment with reflecting the sounds off of the five domes that comprised the cathedral; he played and experimented with the early liturgical music as well as the Black spirituals that he knew from his youth. Zinsser’s vivid description of the session was spine tingling.

It was at this time that I became really interested in their music, as it turns out they have produced quite a few albums, so I bought them and ended up reading the last chapter while listening to their music. It was very different experience; It was inspirational as well as diverting. It enhanced the reading experience, and, in many ways, it made me more aware of those connections between the aural and visual experiences.

As the book ended the story about St. Mark’s cathedral, I grew more interested in the work that Mitchell and Ruff did for jazz education, and I also became very interested in the things that Ruff was investigating while he was a faculty member at Yale. Which brought me to something that I had been interested in prior to reading the book, which was the relationship and connection between mathematics, physics, and music. I did some digging about Hindemith, Ruff’s teacher at Yale, and his obsession with Kepler’s Harmonice Mundi, which eventually led me to this YouTube interview video. The video shows an interview done with Ruff, about ten years prior to his passing and the germination and eventual process that led to Ruff honoring the memory of his beloved teacher.

My summary is this: any story that can lead me to buy and listen to the music of the main subjects of the story while also investigate the connected topics that were only mentioned in the story is one hell of a story.

References

Zinsser, W. (2001). On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Non-Fiction 25th Anniversary Edition. NYC: Harper Collins.