Francis Spufford, Cahokia Jazz
As much as I enjoyed Francis Spufford 's almost comically positively reviewed 2023 novel Cahokia Jazz , and as much as I worried about its intercultural credentials, this can be only a short post. This an ugly time in the semester, and I've been ill for days (not COVID, but one of the innumerable other respiratory things that can strike one down). Not too many readers stop by here these days, either, but since the original point was simply to keep track for myself of what I've been reading, that's not a reason for brevity, but brief is what I'll be anyway. The good news: I found Cahokia Jazz an intensely readable novel, with interesting characters and imaginative narrative threads that made for a quality alt-history experience. (Apparently alt-history noir mystery is a genre now, and I did enjoy Michael Chabon's founding of the genre , if that's what it is.) It's sort of a murder mystery, but murder turns out to be only a spark, so there's a great
