Mike Zwerin is a disarming writer in two distinct senses – he is disarming in the charming sense because he writes with uncontrived simplicity and sensitivity; and he is disarming in the sense that he pre-empts criticism by the candour with which he explains what his book is not trying to prove. With the healthy uncertainty of the sentimental cynic, Zwerin constantly second-guesses himself, always apprehensive that commitment may harden into prejudice, conviction into bigotry.
And obviously, the subject matter of Swing Under The Nazis abounds in pitfalls. The book looks at the clandestine climate in which jazz survived, even flourished, under the Nazi occupation of Europe and poses the question ‘Did swing music and jazz survive because of the challenge of oppression and proscription or despite it?’ Can a sensible parallel be drawn between black jazz and black oppression in the US and white swing and enslaved Europeans under the Nazis? Probably not, but it makes a suitably provocative theme for a book.
Zwerin makes no pontifical claims – he won’t allow himself the indulgence of proselytizing – but he marshals a deal of fascinating research and is so enormously readable that it doesn’t matter a damn.
As with Zwerin’s highly enjoyable autobiography, Close Enough For Jazz, this book is a sprawling, disorganised, anarchical work full of intuitive felicities that speak a great deal about the writer’s personality. It is wantonly subjective – Zwerin has really written a book about writing a book, and he freely acknowledges this – but it is also rich in arcane detail and bubbling over with enthusiasm for the epic and sometimes laughable resilience of human beings in adversity. Mike Hennessey
La Tristesse De Saint Louis: Swing Under The Nazis, by Mike Zwerin, Quartet Books. Hardback, 197 pp, ill. £13.95
