In Robin Kelley's excellent recent biography of Monk, he discusses this article: "for all his defense of Monk's sanity, Lapham fell for the oldest myth of all: 'An emotional and intuitive man, possessing a child's vision of the world'". I highly recommend the book if you like the music. The context is a series of critics who failed to grasp Monk's sophistication and described him, incorrectly, as an untutored musician who had some original improvisatory talent. All these misapprehensions are almost comically reproduced in the Monk entry in Baker's biographical dictionary, for example.

I consider Monk to be one of the most important musicians of the 20th century.