While others have preferred to swap colourful anecdotes or attribute Monk's strangeness to the licence of great artists, Kelley digs into the medical records and underlying causes. Coming to grips with his subject's personality, the biographer deals honestly with Monk's mental illness. Kelly unlocks the mystery of Monk, emphasizing the fundamental soundness of his music and its deep roots in the African-American vernacular traditions. To the extent they discussed his music, the most common adjective applied was "weird." Monk bristled at such commentary, proclaiming on one occasion that "the piano ain't got no wrong notes." When journalists wrote about him, they depicted him staring at a photo of Billie Holiday taped to his ceiling, or focused their attention on his unusual hats or peculiar onstage mannerisms. The jazz world treated him as a colourful oddball, and club owners thought he was too unreliable to book. Yet, as Kelley shows, Monk enjoyed little financial success at the time, despite his innovative work.
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