Jazz (original 1992; edition 1992)

This book actually reads like jazz music. The dialogue, descriptions, structure - everything about it has a feeling of improvised rhythm and melody. ( )

Superbly written, Jazz is the tragic yet hopeful story of Joe and Violet. Born down in Virginia in the late 1800s, they move to "the city" (never named, but I'm guessing New York) when they are in their thirties. Life there for them is more different than they ever imagined, and they change for both better and worse.

Also, Jazz is the story of Dorcas, a confused teenage girl trying to wiggle her way out from under her strict aunt's thumb. Dorcas collides in a way with Joe and Violet that is horrible, yet will make you feel sympathy for everyone involved. ( )

One way or another, all of Toni Morrison's books are about how the lives of black women in America have been damaged by the consequences of slavery. But that doesn't mean they're all the same. Her characters, especially her women, are always unexpected and original in their conception. By the time she came to write Jazz, she had also developed a strong, individual and very engaging style of writing. It's a constant pleasure to read her, the narrator's voice keeps taking you by surprise with the images it uses and the leaps it takes from one topic to another. You never feel you're being lectured about African-American history, having the stories of hate and oppression rammed down your throat. All the same, the message is very clear.
As others have said, when you take a step back from the book you might find yourself wondering where the story has gone. It isn't made clear who the narrator is, and various crucial threads seem to cross arbitrarily, or are simply left dangling. But that doesn't seem to be a problem. All the illogicalities of the story somehow seem to make sense at the moment you come across them, and there's a suspicion at the back of your mind that it will all fit together somehow if you start again at the beginning. ( )

With a 1992 copyright, this has become a classic of modern literature borrowing elements from the improvisational flavor of jazz. Morrison weaves a path of all the essential elements of the human condition using prose at times bordering on the poetic, and at times a run-on spray of phrasing. This is one of those books to put back on a shelf and pull off to re-read sometime again in the future. ( )

This was my pick for book group: I've read some Toni Morrison before, and felt like reading something else of hers, and I was attracted to this book by the mention in a blurb about New York in 1920s. But I don't think life in the city, or more specifically life in New York in the 1920s was ultimately that central to the book; it was more about relationships and coping with things that life throws at you, and some of those are really difficult.

I think I might have to think about what I feel about the book, but just to mention it here before I forget, I never quite figured out who the occasionally surfacing first-person narrator was supposed to be, and whether that was something I should have seen. ( )

Towards the end of this book the narrator impatiently posits: "What's the use of living in the world if you can't make what you want of it?" (or words to that effect). I think that's at the core of this story - that freedom and self-realization come not from the things that happen to us, but from the choices we make about how to respond. Sometimes we choose wisely and sometimes poorly, but even the worst outcome is better than allowing the world to define us.

Certainly the couple in this story, Joe Trace and his wife Violet, make heartbreaking choices. But how they face up to their choices, struggling not to give in to the violence, jealousy, and hardship that threatens to destroy them, not only makes for deep, empathetic characters and a compelling story, but also a pretty great life lesson.

You could say that Toni Morrison approaches this novel with a similar attitude: what's the point of writing a novel if you can't make what you want of it? The story eschews the conventional transitions of most novels, wandering through time and across geography and between narrators. Her prose is similarly unconstrained, alternately sleekly between narration and lyric poetry. Requires the reader to attend, yes, but love the way this allows Morrison to move around the story, telling bits of it first from one perspective and then the other, preserving the layers and complexity of the tale through to the final words of the final chapter.

Which, when you get down to it, is a lot like the musical form after which the book is titled. Like life, jazz is shaped by the choices that the artists make. Sometimes the result is lyrical, other times cacaphonous, but anyone who's every listened to jazz understands that the music is, at its core, entirely about freedom and self-realization. ( )

Outstanding - challenging - extraordinary improv performance! ( )

Toni Morrison is a gifted writer who can set a stage, create a mood, and tell a story taking the reader right into a world that is reserved for a very discriminate segment of the population, whether it is a ghetto tenement, an all black neighborhood, or the home of descendants of American slaves. Morrison is self appointed spokesperson for black women, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize (for Beloved) and the Nobel Prize for Literature. In spite of that, "Jazz" was a disappointment.

Taking place in Harlem, New York City during the 1920’s; the era of prohibition and jazz the story is told from various points of view; each person (including the dead victim) participates in weaving the tale of adultery, murder, and revenge. The first four pages explain the entire plot: 50 year old Joe Trace has an affair with an 18 year old girl named Dorcas and then in a fit of passion kills her. Joe’s wife Violet is already the subject of neighborhood gossip for her questionable mental stability. Discovering that her husband loved another woman sends Violet into a blind rage. Violet storms into the funeral, marches up to the coffin, and attempts to slash Dorcas’ face but she is thrown to the ground and forcibly removed from the church. So there you have it. What happens from page 5 to the end….you ask. Absolutely nothing! Therein lies the problem. No investigation, no trial, no punishment (for Joe or Violet), no divorce, no nothing.

In fact, on Page 6, in the aftermath of the murder and the funeral, Dorcas’ best friend starts hanging around with Joe and Violet, and the narrator eludes to further action, “and that’s how that scandalizing threesome on Lenox Avenue began. What turned out different was who shot whom.” Doesn’t that imply there will be another murder? For the remainder of the book – 223 pages, I kept waiting for something to happen…and nothing. I was stunned. I thought, “Did I miss something?” I re-read the last chapter. Nothing! The plot totally lacked depth and continuity. The one positive aspect of Jazz is the colorful descriptions. Morrison does with words what Spike Lee does with film. But, if you are looking for a story, look elsewhere. ( )

Violet is Joe Trace’s woman, but she is battling the other Violet who lives inside her, the one who wants to steal babies and say weird things. Joe Trace, almost to his surprise, starts up a relationship with eighteen year old Dorcas, and shoots her when she leaves her. Violet loses her mind at the funeral, attacking the coffin and trying to slice the corpse’s face. Yes, it sounds violent, and it is, a bit, but more than anything Jazz is a book about what shapes a person, about redemption, passion and love. Set in the first decades of the last century it slides back and forth between now, then and long ago, in a writing style that uses jazz music’s restless variations around themes. New York, just referred to as City, is very present, almost a character in itself. Not least is the contrast between it and Joe’s and Violet’s rural upbringing central. An almost gentle anger flavours the pages throughout.

It’s cleverly and organically done, but I lack some sort of core here. Too many threads are left hanging, and I have a strong feeling that I won’t remember too much about this novel the second time around either. It’s not often I say this, but I think this one might have actually benefited from being a hundred pages longer. ( )

Again I found it rewarding to return to a Toni Morrison novel. In this story an unknown narrator tells the tale of Joe and Violet Trace. Joe got his name because that was what his parents left without.. .a trace, and Violet gets her named changed to Violent because she tries to cut the face of the dead 18 year old that her husband first wooed and then shot “just to keep the feeling going”. And that‘s only the first two pages. The narration switches back and forth between characters and time, also telling the story of Joe’s mom, the Wild One and the man Golden Gray who was raised by Violet’s Grandmother. There is a kind of music to the city of Harlem and the sensory images of the setting helps to establish this. I am always amazed at the catastrophic events that are seen as commonplace in the worlds of her characters. This story has the ability to make Joe, an adulterer and murderer, a sympathetic character who believe it or not is a good man. There is also a story of love here that we could never foresee until we get to know the history of these people. Morrison uses a narrator who in the end feels she has done poor job describing these people and wishes she lived her own life rather than just observed others. This perhaps is a reflective comment by the author, but I hope she nevers listens.

The Amazon description details:
In a dazzling act of jazz-like improvisation, moving seamlessly in and out of past, present, and future, a mysterious voice--whose identity is a matter of each reader's imagination--weaves this brilliant fiction, at the same time showing how its blues are informed by the brutal exigencies of slavery. Richly combining history, legend, reminiscence, this voice captures as never before the ineffable mood, the complex humanity, of black urban life at a moment in our century we assumed we understood.

Jazz is an unprecedented and astonishing invention, a landmark on the American literary landscape--a novel unforgettable and for all time.
-------------------------------------------------​

Morrison is the next author to read whenever you are disappointed in your latest book. Her language alone lets you know why you spend your quiet hours immersed in words. ( )

Love, betrayal, and forgiveness are some of the most common themes of literature, but there is nothing common about Toni Morrison's extraordinary writing. She evokes the tension of living in Harlem in the 1920's with such passion that one can hear the jazz undercurrents in her spontaneous prose that continually surprises the reader.

Don't read Morrison's books expecting a linear story. She dances around her plot in tantalizing circles that eventually overlap enough to ultimately make sense. I was grabbed in the beginning by the mystery of why Joe murdered his lover Dorcas and was curious about (the sometimes Violent) Violet's over-the-top reaction. Patience and careful reading pay off in this book that doesn't always play by the literary "rules" but ends up being a satisfying reading experience. ( )

Morrison has soul, which is apparent from reading her novel, Jazz. Written in the style of jazz music, Jazz tells a story of Harlem, but drifts across time and space to help fill out the respective motif.

The story focuses on Joe and Viole(n)t trace, each on opposite but similar ends of a spectrum when it comes to Joe's late mistress, Dorcas. As part of a larger, Dante-inspired trilogy (c.f. Beloved and Paradise), Jazz falls somewhere in between, which would put it in Purgatory, aptly so.

Leveraging unique narrative and engaging characters, Morrison has put together a great piece to listen to by yourself, or improvise with your friends. Highly worth a read. ( )

Poetic, structurally resembles jazz, probably great in English (I read the Finnish translation), couldn't relate to the story. ( )

This book is one of the few that I put down after reading the first few sentences. The rhythm and pacing threw me as I tried and retried that opening paragraph, and I reluctantly gave up, returning the book to the library the next day. Of course, that was about 10 years ago. Since then, I've read two of Morrison's books and enjoyed them immensely so I decided to give "Jazz" another go.

"Jazz" tells the story of Violet and Joe Trace, a couple struggling with a strained relationship in different ways: Violet starts to slowly lose herself, sitting down in the street for no reason, releases all the birds in the apartment; Joe shoots his teenaged lover, Dorcas, to death. Weaving back and forth in time, allowing each character -- even Dorcas -- an opportunity to tell his or her part in the events, the reader learns not just about the story of Violet and Joe, but also their family histories, what lead them to such a drastic point in their lives.

I managed to make it past those first lines this time, finally understanding that Morrison used the language as her own interpretation of jazz music from the 1920s: flowing, rhythmic and repetitive, riffing off to tangents that hold you equally as strong as the original thread, but ultimately finding its way back. In that respect, the writing brilliantly created the feel of a big city just getting into the swing of jazz, affecting how people acted and spoke, how they walked, how they related to one another. While that held my interest, sometimes it detracted form the story, such as the tangent describing the City near the beginning going on for pages and pages though it didn't seem to have anything to do with the actual tale.

Many of the sections felt that way to me -- I enjoyed how they were written, but what they were saying didn't seem to have an impact on the story as far as I could tell. Golden Gray, True Belle, the Wild Woman -- all finely drawn characters, but I scratched my head trying to understand what their stories had to do with Violet and Joe. I grudgingly forged ahead with those areas because when Morrison stuck to the tale of Joe and Violet, the story picked up steam and a definite direction.

But I won't call this book one of my favorites. "Jazz" wound up feeling like more of an experiment in writing which sometimes worked. ( )

Forget the rating. It's really not important, and I'm not sure it has much to do with the book because I'm not sure it's a ratable book or, if it is, I'm not sure I'm the one that's qualified to do so. In fact, I'm definitely not.

I had only read a short story by Toni Morrison before and didn't find anything unusual about the writing then. This time the very distinct and peculiar writing style struck me from the beginning. One of the blurbs says the book contains "some of the finest lyrics passages ever written in a modern novel". Perhaps that's true. I wouldn't know how to phrase it. Maybe you can get idea of it by reading this, the first paragraph of Jazz (or maybe you can't):

"Sth, I know that woman. She used to live with a flock of birds on Lenox Avenue. Know her husband, too. He fell for an eighteen-year-old girl with one of those deepdown, spooky loves that made him so sad and happy he shot her just to keep the feelings going. When the woman, her name is Violet, went to the funeral to see the girl and to cut her dead face they threw her to the floor and out of the church. She ran, then, through all that snow, and when she got back to her apartment she took the birds from their cages and set them out the windows to freeze or fly, including the parrot that said, 'I Love You' "

There are two kinds of great books. There are great books you know they're great the first time you read them. And you have such an amazing time with them that you don't want to get back to them anytime soon for fear that you won't be able to replicate the first experience. And there is also the other kind. Great books that you sense they are great, but the first time is not enough for you to understand or feel or touch that greatness. And you want to go back to them immediately after you've finished them because you know you've missed something. You feel it. You got confused at times and at times you got distracted or thought "fuck this paragraph, I don't have the patience to try and decipher it, I'll just move on with the story" and then regretted it. Then the book is over and you love its ending so much you think you could've loved it all if only you paid more attention to it instead of just hurriedly getting through the words. That's Jazz for you.

If you decide to read the book, focus. Give it your full attention. Don't hurry through it. It's not an easy book. But I sense that it's a great one. I'm keeping this rating for now, but I don't think I got all I could get from Jazz. I think - or hope- that, inevitably, I will go back to it someday. And when that happens, I'll try to really get to its core. ( )

Though it took me awhile to get into, this book struck a chord and made my heart ache by the end. Like any good jazz song, it runs through the gamut of emotions and leaves you wanting more. ( )

Impenetrable. Polemical novel of female grievances. ( )

This is a complex novel in which story lines are repeated and improvised much like a jazz piece. It's also a unique novel in which the book itself is the narrator. I'm a big Toni Morrison fan, and while it's hard to say so definitively, this may be my favorite of her novels. It's fun to read both for its creative style, interesting storytelling, and even its humor. ( )

Toni Morrison’s Jazz begins by focusing on Violet, Joe, and Dorcas. As the novel progresses, more characters join in seemingly unrelated to the story but in the end are more connected than any of them realize. Jazz is nonlinear novel, where specific events are glanced over and then later in the novel it is addressed again and explained in more detail. All of the characters are very flawed but surprisingly they remain sympathetic. When thinking of the characters, without knowing them, immediately one thinks of the stereotypes of the young mistress, the old husband, and the poor wife that is cheated on. Yet none of it is applicable to the characters.

The book is fast-paced at certain times, always leaving me wondering what will happen next but at others, my attention began to wander off and certain paragraphs were impossible for me to understand. Overall, I would recommend the book with a warning that it is not an easy read and one has to pay close attention to what is really happening. ( )

Obsessive love, self-loathing, and the longing for redemption frame this story. Told in a disjointed time-line, the story meanders, picking up threads, until the connections are revealed towards the end of the book.

Joe doesn't know who he is or where he comes from. His wife, also orphaned and raised by her grandmother, also carries a weak identity. At the beginning of the book, they are living a sad and isolated life, sharing a house without even speaking to one another. The reason for their malaise is Joe's affair with and murder of a young girl. The event sends both Joe and his wife back into their own pasts, even examining the lives of their ancestors, to explain how they arrived at this moment in their lives.

I keep reading Toni Morrison books thinking that I won't like them when I start and being surprised. ( )

This book, one of my all-time favorites, speaks to me every time I read it. It exemplifies the best fiction to me, in that it takes the most sordid of human sins (adultery, murder) and transforms a tale centering on them into art, which is to say, into something beautiful. The beauty is not in the sin but in redemption and forgiveness. When I complain about other books, what I'm coming to realize I really mean is that the plot lacks some element of redemption. Redemption for me is hope. ( )

I think I may have started to read this in college, but know I never completed it first time round. A strange read - some of it I really enjoyed but at other times I felt like putting it down. On finishing it I think I did enjoy it, but nowhere near as much as Beloved. ( )

I remember very little of this book -- I believe I liked it but it lacks the power of Beloved. ( )

beautiful language but weak plot ( )