Icouldn't help reading parts of Paul Beatty's third novel, Slumberland, aloud. The inside jacket says Beatty is a poet with two collections to his name. It doesn't say that he's a musician but, on the evidence of this book, he must be.

At one point in the narrative, an old jazz maestro uses a paperback for musical accompaniment. He "ruffled the pages of the book over his pant seam, and the resulting sound rivalled that of the best Max Roach brushwork". He lifted it "to his mouth and played chapter seven like a diatonic harmonica; blowing and drawing on the pages like leaves of grass in the hands of Pan".