My enjoyment of such exquisitely bad writing would be less conflicted were it not for the knowledge that on April 22, 1921, an 18-year-old Bix was actually arrested for a “lewd and lascivious act with child”—a 5-year-old. According to a new biography by Jean Pierre Lion, “Bix had supposedly asked the girl to lift her skirt.” Said the girl’s father in the police report: “[M]y little girl came home, told me that a man took her in the garage, said some awful things to her . . . She said he asked to show herself.” (For the record, charges were dropped when the girl’s father said he did not want her to have to testify in court.)