Toni Morrison

Joe Trace - in his fifties, door-to-door salesman of beauty products, erstwhile devoted husband - shoots to death his lover of three months, impetuous, eighteen-year-old Dorcas. At the funeral, his determined, hard-working wife, Violet - who is given to stumbling into dark mental cracks - tries with a knife to disfigure the corpse. Jazz is the story of a triangle of passion, jealousy, murder and redemption, of sex and spirituality, of slavery and liberation, country and city, of being male and female, African American, and above all being human.

Jazz

Naïa

Pain. I seem to have an affection, a kind of sweettooth for it. Bolts of lightning, little rivulets of thunder. And I the eye of the storm. Mourning the split trees, hens starving on rooftops. Figuring out what can be done to save them since they cannot save themselves without me because—well, it's my storm, isn't it? I break lives to prove I can mend them back again. And although the pain is theirs, I share it, don't I? Of course. Of course. I wouldn't have it any other way. But it is another way. I am uneasy now. Feeling a bit false. What, I wonder, what would I be without a few brilliant spots of blood to ponder? Without aching words that set, then miss, the mark?

Girls can do that. Steer a man away from death or drive him right to it.

Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it. I saw you and made up my mind.

He had struggled a long time with that loss, believed he had resigned himself to it, had come to terms with the fact that old age would be not remembering what things felt like. That you could say, "I was scared to death," but you could not retrieve the fear.

Now he lies in bed remembering every detail of that October afternoon when he first met her, from start to finish, and over and over. Not just because it is tasty, but because he is trying to sear her into his mind, brand her there against future wear.

It could have worked, I suppose, but the children of suicides are hard to please and quick to believe no one loves them because they are not really here.

Claire E

Who will take my part ? Soap away the shame? Suds it till it falls away muck at my feet to be stepped out of ?

ame 

Pain. I seem to have an affection, a kind of sweet tooth for it. Bolts of lightning, little rivulets of thunder. And I am the eye of the storm. Mourning the split trees, hens starving on rooftops. Figuring out what can be done to save them since they cannot save themselves without me because - well, it's my storm, isn't it? I break lives to prove I can mend them back again. And although the pain is theirs, I share it, don't I? Of course. Of course. I wouldn't have it any other way. But it is another way. I am uneasy now. Feeling a bit false. What, I wonder, what would I be without a few brilliant spots of blood to ponder? Without aching words that set, then miss, the mark?

Only now, he thought, now that I know I have a father do I feel his absence: the place where he should have been and not. Before, I thought everybody was one-armed, like me. Now I feel the surgery. The crunch of bone when it is sundered, the sliced flesh and the tubes of blood cut through, shocking the blood run and disturbing the nerves. They dangle and writhe singing pain. Waking me with the sound of itself, thrumming when I sleep so deeply it strangles my dreams away. There is nothing for it but to go away from where he is not to where he used to be and might be still. I am not going to be healed, or to find the arm that was removed from me. I am going to freshen the pain, point it, so we both know what it is for.

all i can say is reading jazz while listening to jazz is such a meta experience and that i would advise others to do the same. 

toni morrison, the writer that you are… truly truly amazing amazing. it’s a pretty dense read and some parts got my easily distracted mind confused but these are all the petals that shape the beauty that is toni morrison’s writings. 

“what’s the world for if you can’t make it up the way you want it?… don’t you want it to be something more than what it is?… if you don’t (change) it, it will change you and it’ll be your fault cause you let it. i let it. and it messed up my life.” 

Syasya Diyana 

toni morrison, the writer that you are… truly truly amazing amazing. it’s a pretty dense read and some parts got my easily distracted mind confused but these are all the petals that shape the beauty that is toni morrison’s writings. 

“what’s the world for if you can’t make it up the way you want it?… don’t you want it to be something more than what it is?… if you don’t (change) it, it will change you and it’ll be your fault cause you let it. i let it. and it messed up my life.” 

a novel

Maureen

“I’m strong. Alone, yes, but top-notch and indestructible — like the City in 1926 when all the wars are over and there will never be another one.”

***

3.5 stars. Jazz is unlike her other novels that I’ve read. The plot is messy and non-linear, a narrative that explores all viewpoints: first, second, third — you name it. There is, however, an overarching narrator, which to me, reads as Morrison herself. 

Set mainly during the Harlem Renaissance, Jazz embodies many things. Passion and betrayal, but also violence, depression, and the search for identity. 

The entire plot is summed up in the book’s first paragraph. How a husband cheated on his wife with an 18-year-old lover and murdered her after discovering her affair, and how the wife retaliated by slashing her corpse during the funeral. 

An ambitious narrative to undertake, but it’s no problem for a great novelist like Toni Morrison. 

The stream of consciousness flows so endlessly, that it’s hard to understand where the story is going. But you tread on simply because you’re aching to know how it all ends. Safe to say, the ending is as rewarding as the glimmering quotes Morrison sprinkled all around. (My favorite thing about reading her novels.)

Quotes like, “Maybe everybody has a renegade tongue yearning to be on its own” reveal her genius time and again. How she captures the human condition like no other. 

Despite revealing the characters’ plights at the start, she thoroughly examines their psyche, why they act certain ways, and the traumas that incited it. Like her other novels, Morrison never passes up the opportunity to discuss the vestiges of racial violence.

Everyone here is imperfect, but she humanizes their actions in such a way that you can’t help but root for them in the end.

Truly unlike her other novels, this deserves to be recognized for how it highlights the doors that opened up to her people in Harlem during the Jazz Age, the dissonance that lies between the rural and urban landscape, and how “it was loving the City that distracted me and gave me ideas.”

A bold and experimental read.

Bria

She should’ve taken that anger out on Joe since he’s the one who ruined their marriage

Mary Rose Luksha

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison was the first book of hers that I read. I really enjoyed it so I decided to pick up Jazz. This was definitely a let down after Song of Solomon. 

Most of the time I was reading this I felt like I was reading a college student's creative writing assignment on description. Her description was great, and she excellently captured the whole feel of Jazz and that time period...but a page-turner that does not make. The story was thin. And it was upsetting because there is a more intricate story there. Maybe she's assuming that her reader picks up on her subtleties and generalities and fills the story in on their own, but I like a little direction now and then. 

I probably would have given this two stars, due to lack of plot, but her excellent description and evocation of emotion saved it.

Summer Stanley

I think I may need to read this again in a different state of mind. Although there were moments and phrases I found beautiful and particularly poignant, I just spent most of the story confused. Trying too hard to connect the dots and what happened? Did anything?

Amber Laha

I loved the beautiful, musical and poetic, writing. She wanted to capture the music of that time, Jazz, and she did. But we lose the story with her ramblings of the city, of life there, of the music even. Instead of using the story itself to build that all on, she used it to build the story and it fell apart. Because of that I felt we never really delved into the story itself or got to know the characters. If it wasn't for the writing and how much I loved it would have gotten a much lower rating.

Jan Oszmiański

Suzie

‘Jazz blazes with an intensity more usually found in tragic poetry of the past.... Morrison's voice transcends colour and creed and she has become one of America's outstanding post-war writers’ Guardian Joe Trace – in his fifties, door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, erstwhile devoted husband – shoots dead his lover of three months, the impetuous, eighteen-year-old Dorcas. At the funeral, his determined, hard-working wife, Violet, who is given to stumbling into dark mental cracks, tries with a knife to disfigure the corpse. Passionate and profound, Jazz brings us back and forth in time, in a narrative assembled from the hopes, fears and realities of black urban life. ‘She wrote about what was difficult and what was necessary and in doing so she unearthed for a generation of people a kind of redemption, a kind of relief’ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, New York Times BY THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF BELOVED Winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction

Jazz

Reviews

Highlights