Considering Genius collects jazz writing spanning 27 years from the famed polemicist of jazz’s neo-conservative movement, Stanley Crouch. The 30 pieces collected here constitute not so much a book about jazz as the story of one man’s path through it and how it influenced his changing view of life in America. No matter how enamored he might be of his subjects or how derisive he might be of his targets, the writing is always about Crouch—his temperament, his worldview, his values and absolutes. He is bracingly honest, even when it does him no favors.

Perhaps the most interesting piece is the prologue. It’s an autobiographical account of Crouch’s journey from curious jazz listener to budding writer, moving on to his direct (and fascinating) experiences with the musicians as a free-jazz drummer, and finally to his conversion from musical and political liberalism through disillusionment to arch criticism of the moment’s political, social and artistic revolutions. In this, there are striking parallels to the transformation of many ex-Communists (William Buckley, for example) into the architects of the neo-conservative political ideology popularized by Reagan and Bush. If, as I.F. Stone said, “Ex’s have to prove their apostasy,” then the origin of the chip on Crouch’s shoulder becomes clear.

By now Crouch’s bluntest points are well-known, thanks to Ken Burns’ Jazz documentary: Armstrong and Ellington were musical saints exemplifying the potential and core values of the art; Miles Davis squandered his gifts and sold out, donning platform shoes and electricity in search of a bigger (and booty-shakin’) audience; Coltrane was brilliant until his music embraced anarchy, and free jazzers were mostly unskilled frauds trading in radical chic. Fusion added rock poison to the mix; and then Wynton came along and saved jazz, restoring balance to The Force like Luke Skywalker. Miles is the Darth Vader role in that analogy.

No matter how much one might bristle at the reactionary bent of Crouch’s opinions, he is hard to ignore as a potent and compelling critical voice. He harshly questions deeply-held assumptions of the Left in such a way that I found myself mentally rallying, concocting newly-composed parries to defend my point of view from the thrust of Crouch’s assertions. That his writing can initiate this internal process is vivid proof of his skills in the rhetorical arena. Moreover, when Crouch is on point and writing about a musician’s positive attributes without making it at the expense of someone he deems inferior, he is lucid and effective, connecting the great artists of jazz with the broader American cultural framework in a way that properly contextualizes a music that draws freely from both high art and pop forms. Read his pieces on Gillespie, Monk, Ellington, and his excellent 1989 essay on Charlie Parker in this book for evidence.

Where Crouch goes awry is his summary dismissal of virtually all jazz and improvised music of the post-free projection. He writes, “When it wasn’t inept or pretentious, most supposed avant-garde jazz was more an improvised version of European concert music.” This simplistic damnation—particularly ironic coming from the man who, via Jazz at Lincoln Center, helped embalm jazz by presenting it in European-style concert halls—fails to take into account the vast and varied tributaries of musical expression emergent from the 1970s to today; an area so wide that it can accommodate the dancing rhythms of Hamid Drake, the textural daring of Derek Bailey, the skewed blues of James “Blood” Ulmer, and the scorched-earth energy of Peter Brötzmann, to name only a few. They might not all qualify as “jazz” per se, but their musics are unimaginable without it.

A recurring motif in Crouch’s criticism is the failure of many in the arts to get past the simple-mindedness of adolescent rebellion and move on to ideas and work of greater depth. In this he makes a valid point, but his criteria for what constitutes “maturity” is so narrow that he is unwilling to appreciate any art or music that uses elements of distortion or abstraction which renders his more recent pieces so predictable as to be virtually useless. In the first paragraph, you know what you’re going to get, so if you agree you can read what you already believe. If you disagree, then a perverse fantasy argument with the Big Bad Crouch awaits. At his best, Crouch will have you revisiting old records with renewed appreciation (as all good music writing should). At his worst, you’ll see the pitfalls of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.