Jazz
From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner, a passionate, profound story of love and obsession that brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of Black urban life. With a foreword by the author.
“As rich in themes and poetic images as her Pulitzer Prize–winning Beloved.... Morrison conjures up the hand of slavery on Harlem’s jazz generation. The more you listen, the more you crave to hear.” —Glamour
In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe’s wife, Violet, attacks the girl’s corpse. This novel “transforms a familiar refrain of jilted love into a bold, sustaining time of self-knowledge and discovery. Its rhythms are infectious” (People).
"The author conjures up worlds with complete authority and makes no secret of her angst at the injustices dealt to Black women.” —The New York Times Book Review
“As rich in themes and poetic images as her Pulitzer Prize–winning Beloved.... Morrison conjures up the hand of slavery on Harlem’s jazz generation. The more you listen, the more you crave to hear.” —Glamour
In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe’s wife, Violet, attacks the girl’s corpse. This novel “transforms a familiar refrain of jilted love into a bold, sustaining time of self-knowledge and discovery. Its rhythms are infectious” (People).
"The author conjures up worlds with complete authority and makes no secret of her angst at the injustices dealt to Black women.” —The New York Times Book Review
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Community Reviews
I will not give this a rating because I feel like my experience with this was my fault completely. I think I missed some key points and misunderstand some things so I was confused for the majority of this. I will be rereading this at some point in the future because I did enjoy the parts where I gave up trying to understand and just tried to enjoy myself.
Wow. While I often struggled to know who was narrating each section, the book has a wonderful dreamlike, improvisation. Toni Morrison has a perceptive way with language - allowing it fluidity and grace while preserving its urgency. The juxtaposition of ideas brings the familiar into a new-found light. "...laughter is serious. More complicated, more serious than tears." The interpretation of the myriad ways to be black during the reconstruction and the years following that - into the 20's and 30's was enlightening to me. I just wish I understood the end!
Morrison crafted quite the tale, one greatly reminiscent of a universal human experience: from the delicious and dangerous nature of assumption to the passion and pain of being alive. I have a feeling that if I went back to reread the novel, I would appreciate it all that much more... It's just one of those books whose ideas and phrases will haunt you, if you allow them to. What a book to make you aware of the present and all of its possibilities, just through the use of "now".
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