Jazz

by Toni Morrison

Book Overview

Set in Harlem in the 1920s, this novel chronicles a bittersweet triangle involving a middle-aged door-to-door salesman, his mentally unstable wife, and his eighteen-year-old girlfriend.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0452269652
• ISBN13: 9780452269651
• Release Date: April 1993
• Publisher: Plume Books
• Length: 229 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Beautifully written

This was a beautiful book and absolutely embodies Jazz in its writing. The intertwining story lines mixed with the smooth poetic wording was intriguing.

One of my favorite Morrison Novels

Beloved may get most of the acclaim, but Song of Solomon (my favorite novel of all time) and Jazz are just as good, and may be even better. Jazz is certainly the most artful of her novels in terms of theme and the self-reflexivity of the language. The last chapter, in which the narrator becomes a confessional character and admits to his/her biases and fallibility stands with the "Time Passes" section of Woolf's "To the Lighthouse" as my favorite passage of prose ever published. This was also the most difficult of Morrison's novels for me. I read it in High School and hope to reread it soon to see if a few years of intensive undergraduate English classes have sharpened my skills enough so that I can make better sense of some of the themes that confused me the first time I read it. But the style is wonderfully playful--the author is clearly having so much fun constructing this book. The didacticism and melancholy that dampen the effects of later works like Paradise and Love (due, I'm afraid, to her winning of the Nobel) are not yet evident. Sadly, this may be Morrison's last "great" novel, but I still am eagerly looking forward to her next one (according to an interview I read, it will be set in the 17th century and involve witch trials... perhaps with a Tituba-like character as the lead?) Lastly, the reader who said that he felt he couldn't enjoy the book because he was neither black nor a woman is being embarrassingly ridiculous (I hesitate to use the word "ignorant.") I'm a homosexual white male from rural Texas, with absolutely nothing culturally in common with Morrison, and she's been my favorite author since I first read Song of Solomon when I was 15. I've since read and enjoyed all of her novels and a few of her works of criticism. It's very easy to dismiss a writer because "they're just not writing for you" than to admit that maybe there was something greater in the literature you didn't connect with. There are plenty of viable arguments against Morrison's art qua art (as there are against any work by any artist, from Homer to Dante to Joyce). Use something a little more thoughtful the next time you criticize this novel (as you are totally free to do) than hiding behind the petty shield of "Wah, Toni Morrison's not writing for me because I'm not black." To paraphrase Maya Angelou (or was it Adrienne Rich? My American Lit teacher would have my scalp), "Just as I knew Shakespeare was writing for me, as a young poor black girl in the South, so I now write equally for the old white farmer in Oklahoma."

Jazz - it's a kind of music - improvised!

The key to understanding this amazing novel is in the title. Each character is a Jazz instrument, playing and embellishing his or her theme, then stepping aside while the theme is picked up by the next instrument/character with variations. This is improvisational music, not a composition, more like a jam session. It is therefore improvisational literature - not hard to understand, just beautiful, energetic, and extremely clever. Enjpy!

Jazz in Writing

"Jazz" (1992) is one of the best works by Toni Morrison, the first African-American woman awarded Nobel Prize for literature.The best way to read "Jazz" is to read it slowly, savour every line, every sentence, every mental picture it creates. It is a lyrical novel, where the story shifts back and forth in time -- expression of feelings, moods and thoughts has a priority over a plot. The story of love lost, searched and found on the background of 1920's Harlem creates an appealing, coloful tapestry. Morrison often uses "stream of conscoiusness" method of writing, first applied by Virginia Woolf. Dialogues, although rather scarce, are brisk, full of humanity (good and bad) and even spark with wisdom of common people. The narrator identifies with the characters, portrays them with affection and ultimate understanding. The story is marked with striking sense of detail, various motifs interchange and interweave -- just like in jazz music -- and the result is powerful.As with jazz music, "Jazz" the book is not a book for everyone. But once you come to appreciate the style, you can read it again and again and every time find something new.One is bound to agree with a reviewer in Cosmopolitan who related to "Jazz" as if it was "Shakespeare singing the blues."

Another great Morrison read

In line witb Toni Morrison's tradition of superb fiction tomes, Jazz is a work that is too complex to produce a universal interpretation. The genius of Morrison's work is the personal relationship between the reader and the subject matter that her novels compel. Interpretation is purposefully subjective. In Jazz, Morrison manages to accomplish a literary feat: somehow capturing the history, essence, and character of a genre of music and translating it into literature. The novel "Jazz", is, like the music, seductive yet melancholy, spirited yet unpretentious, and is a simultaneous diatribe against and celebration of life. "Jazz" does not attempt to offer a rational explanation of the seemingly bizarre behavior of the main protagonists; instead, Jazz attempts to delve further into the human consciousness, into the cancatenation of events which shape (and sometimes warp) the human mind; Jazz attempts to highlight the pepetual change which constitutes life. Therefore, I had no trouble understanding orphan Dorcas' "wild ways" and unimaginable selfishness, nor Joe's neverending "hunt" for his mother, which culminated in Dorcas' shooting, nor Violet's possessiveness, grounded in her enormously unstable childhood.Like its musical counterpart, the novel "Jazz" is a work of genius. Would that all novels evoke such a profound personal impact.

Pure genius!!

This book is aptly titled JAZZ, as it's entire rythm is full of trilling notes and lyrical phrases. I lost myself several times in the unmatchable prose and style of Ms. Morrison. Only to find myself mired in the deep bass and trembling crescendos of black love. Ms. Morrison's descrptions of under-the-covers love felt right. Anyone ineterested in going for a musical ride that begans in the deep south and ends in Harlem should jump aboard!