Jazz (Paperback)

by Toni Morrison (Author)
Key Phrases: deer eyes, True Belle, Alice Manfred, Vera Louise (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Jazz embraces the vibrant music and lifestyle of 1920s Harlem, an urban renaissance of opportunity and glamour. A novel of murder, hard lives, and broken dreams, Jazz sways with a lyric medley of voices and human consciousness.

Narrated by the author, Toni Morrison, this is an intense but gratifying three hours of tape. Background jazz music enhances the feel of '20s Harlem, a city that attracted thousands of black southerners hoping for better lives. Joe Trace and his wife Violet were part of this migration; madly in love with each other and the idea of this urban mecca, they "traindanced into the city." But like so many of the marriages in Morrison's novels, this union crumbles, and the dreams for a better life fade away. Joe finds another, a love "that made him so sad and happy he shot her just to keep the feeling going."

In Jazz, time ebbs and flows like human memory, traversing between recollections of the past and expectations for the future; likewise, jazz music is often wild and chaotic. Here Morrison once again exemplifies herself as both a superb writer and a masterful storyteller. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

From Publishers Weekly
Morrison's authoritative novel--a BOMC main selection and a 17-week PW bestseller in cloth--tells the story of three intersecting tragic lives, and adroitly uses the motif of jazz to make palpable the feel and excitement of Harlem in the 1920s.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (June 8, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400076218
• ISBN-13: 978-1400076215
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #12,454 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "I'm strong. Alone, yes, but top notch and indestructible, like the city in 1926 when all the wars are over...", April 20, 2008

By	Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

Set primarily in Harlem in 1926, when jazz was bursting forth from the traditions of gospel and blues, this 1992 novel is one of Morrison's most experimental and least accessible. Written from multiple points of view, it uses the patterns of jazz itself for its structure. A series of overarching themes connects the work, but these are seen in individual characterizations and episodes which flash backward and forward, twisting and turning as they connect, misconnect, change, and ultimately create a unique world larger than the sum of its individual parts.

Focusing primarily on middle-aged Violet Trace, her fifty-year-old husband Joseph, and Dorcas Manfred, his teenage lover, whom he believes shares his passion, Morrison explores issues of love and fear, sex and obsession, violence and passivity, and strength and dependence, in addition to her big issues of color and gender. At the outset of the novel, Joseph has murdered Dorcas, fearing that his love for her will never be as great as it is at the moment just before her death. His wife Violet, distraught, is forcibly removed from Dorcas's wake, and though she believes herself to be strong and indestructible, she shows her own vulnerability, sometimes seeing "that other Violet" who inhabits her soul.

Gradually, the individual stories of Violet, Joe, their families, and Dorcas and her family, some members of whom go back even into the 1800s, flesh out the characterizations upon which this novel depends. For much of the novel, however, the reader must be patient, not sure exactly how all these characters are connected to each other, like the most experimental improvisations in jazz. Gradually, they do connect, and gradually the theme of redemption emerges triumphant.

Brilliant in its construction and thematic development, the novel requires the reader to make many connections which other authors (and Morrison in most of her other novels) make or suggest as a matter of course. Her complex, spiraling structure (which Faulkner also often employs) in Beloved, Song of Solomon, and even an early novel like Sula, for example, seems more effective in these, perhaps because these novels have smaller casts of characters, and the importance of particular episodes and the relationships of many characters are clearer. For me, this was a novel to appreciate, rather than to love. n Mary Whipple

Sula
Beloved
Song of Solomon
Tar Baby (Contemporary Fiction, Plume)
Conversations with Toni Morrison (Literary Conversations Series)

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Amazing Morrison Novel, October 27, 2005

By	Brian Hawkinson (San Jose, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Without a doubt, I know when I pick up a Morrison novel that I will be reading a deep and complexly woven story that forces you to think about life, all the while enjoying the storyline for what it is. Jazz is no exception.

Using recursive narration, we are able to let the tale unfold one chapter at a time. As we learn more about a character we move onto another, yet must look back a ways into their past to understand who and where they come from (recursive narration), before we can rejoin the story. This style of writing is my favorite style, something Faulkner uses heavily, and I can never get enough of it.

Seeing Violet become something, seemingly, not who she is and then letting it wrap full around into a mature and complex character is amazing. Seeing Joe fall in love three times, one to someone not his wife, and yet still be able to see what made him move, what made him tick ("there is only one apple") creates a balanced person, one who is neither perfect nor flawed, but one that is real and human.

Morrison does this time and again, using her recursive approach to shed light onto real and human characters, utilizing her writing to make a novel that the reader can not only enjoy and feel, but one that makes the reader respect what has been created. Five stars for Morrison as well as for Jazz, a most definite recommend to any potential readers.

1.0 out of 5 stars Didn't Like It, January 18, 2009

By	JB (somewhere in DE) - See all my reviews

I have read quite a few Toni Morrison books and I have to honestly say that this one was really disappointing. First off, make sure you do some research on this period before you do any reading. Also, find out what "Jazz" means, not the music type. I found the story uninteresting and didn't have that "everything came together" feeling at the end. Contrary to most of the other reviewers, I did not enjoy this book.