The Elsewhere Swerve: Polyrhythmic Epistemology and Inclusive History in Charlotte Carter’s Jazz Detective Fiction Novel Coq au Vin (1999)

Charlotte Carter’s “orchestrated” detective fiction novel Coq au Vin utilizes jazz as a compositional and epistemological methodology. Employed by Blues Woman and practicing jazz musician Nanette Hayes, jazz (as) methodology animates Coq au Vin’s discourse of value to recognize both the legacy and technique of jazz music beyond kitsch representations of black Parisian jazz as primitive “jass culture.” At the same time, the protagonist’s ambivalent affinity for two New York and Paris is contextualized through black diasporic history. In effect, Nanette’s inhabitation of a liminal psychic and physical space within an increasingly commercialized cultural diaspora does not get remedied through a return to home or marriage, marking her exile within/to a “radical elsewhere” both nostalgic and critical.