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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 passionate, profound story of love and obsession brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of black urban life.
229 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1992
2,119 people are currently reading
53.3k people want to read
About the author
Toni Morrison
223books21.9kfollowersChloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist and editor. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
Born and raised in Lorain, Ohio, Morrison graduated from Howard University in 1953 with a B.A. in English. Morrison earned a master's degree in American Literature from Cornell University in 1955. In 1957 she returned to Howard University, was married, and had two children before divorcing in 1964. Morrison became the first black female editor for fiction at Random House in New York City in the late 1960s. She developed her own reputation as an author in the 1970s and '80s. Her novel Beloved was made into a film in 1998. Morrison's works are praised for addressing the harsh consequences of racism in the United States and the Black American experience.
The National Endowment for the Humanities selected Morrison for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities, in 1996. She was honored with the National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters the same year. President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on May 29, 2012. She received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction in 2016. Morrison was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2020.
Born and raised in Lorain, Ohio, Morrison graduated from Howard University in 1953 with a B.A. in English. Morrison earned a master's degree in American Literature from Cornell University in 1955. In 1957 she returned to Howard University, was married, and had two children before divorcing in 1964. Morrison became the first black female editor for fiction at Random House in New York City in the late 1960s. She developed her own reputation as an author in the 1970s and '80s. Her novel Beloved was made into a film in 1998. Morrison's works are praised for addressing the harsh consequences of racism in the United States and the Black American experience.
The National Endowment for the Humanities selected Morrison for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities, in 1996. She was honored with the National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters the same year. President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on May 29, 2012. She received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction in 2016. Morrison was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2020.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,968 reviews
September 1, 2024
I cannot tell you how much my entire soul snaps to attention when I’m reading Toni Morrison. I am shocked into pure longing; I want to get my mouth around her words, and my mind, breathe them in with the avidity of a dying man. Yet, halfway through Jazz, I could not stand how thoroughly, passionately loving the novel is, how recklessly generous it is—to the characters, to the City, to the reader. How intimate the story is, like constantly overhearing a confession. I was overcome.
Jazz begins with these opening lines, spoken in reverence and curse:
It is an intense beginning, one that pulls away the room, leaving nothing but the shock of words. In Jazz, Morrison asks us to own up to the more disturbing aspects of romantic love. She reveals, quite unforgettably, how complicated our attachments to one another are, the collisions and longings of bodies, the way people become minefields for each other, treading, treading, and treading, until the whole thing is set ablaze.
With the cadence of a storyteller, which can turn a street corner into a sacred place, Morrison grapples for her characters� depths. She is fierce in her determination to capture the rich landscape of Black social life, to enable both pleasure and trauma, both violent dehumanization and profound humanity, and to locate the beauty that exists in the commonplace. She writes dazzlingly about the bewilderment of desire, about the complicated nature of womanbonds, and what it costs to give others so much power over us. She brings humanity to narrative tension, and shapes each character with tenderness and care.
Morrison describes Jazz as a “talking book,� and it is. Reading the novel, one senses not so much a pen writing, but a voice performing. It is that aura of the storyteller, so grounded and direct and conversational, which gives the novel an air of spontaneous improvisation. But it is also that Jazz (as its title hints) is musical in structure. Morrison allows the novel to sing, to repeat and harmonize, to rehearse new themes, riff upon them, leave and return to them. At points in the novel, where a chapter trails off into a word or phrase, that same word or phrase will return to the beginning of the next chapter, sometimes with a difference, revealing ripples and new patterns like texture on a ground. Expanding the space of the novel ever wider and ever clearer.
This is what exhilarates most about Jazz—that it resists enclosure. Morrison’s stunning success comes through a shrewd awareness of the reader’s expectations, as well as the ability to expand and reconfigure our emotional responses to the text. In a novel where the self is constantly constituted and interrupted through storytelling, nothing is signed and sealed. By the end, the characters escape the outcome even the novel’s prepared for. They elide the restrictions imposed upon their bodies and go on to improvise their own futures, as if to say, where there is potential for improvisation, there is potential for freedom.
Jazz begins with these opening lines, spoken in reverence and curse:
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 feeling going.
It is an intense beginning, one that pulls away the room, leaving nothing but the shock of words. In Jazz, Morrison asks us to own up to the more disturbing aspects of romantic love. She reveals, quite unforgettably, how complicated our attachments to one another are, the collisions and longings of bodies, the way people become minefields for each other, treading, treading, and treading, until the whole thing is set ablaze.
With the cadence of a storyteller, which can turn a street corner into a sacred place, Morrison grapples for her characters� depths. She is fierce in her determination to capture the rich landscape of Black social life, to enable both pleasure and trauma, both violent dehumanization and profound humanity, and to locate the beauty that exists in the commonplace. She writes dazzlingly about the bewilderment of desire, about the complicated nature of womanbonds, and what it costs to give others so much power over us. She brings humanity to narrative tension, and shapes each character with tenderness and care.
Morrison describes Jazz as a “talking book,� and it is. Reading the novel, one senses not so much a pen writing, but a voice performing. It is that aura of the storyteller, so grounded and direct and conversational, which gives the novel an air of spontaneous improvisation. But it is also that Jazz (as its title hints) is musical in structure. Morrison allows the novel to sing, to repeat and harmonize, to rehearse new themes, riff upon them, leave and return to them. At points in the novel, where a chapter trails off into a word or phrase, that same word or phrase will return to the beginning of the next chapter, sometimes with a difference, revealing ripples and new patterns like texture on a ground. Expanding the space of the novel ever wider and ever clearer.
This is what exhilarates most about Jazz—that it resists enclosure. Morrison’s stunning success comes through a shrewd awareness of the reader’s expectations, as well as the ability to expand and reconfigure our emotional responses to the text. In a novel where the self is constantly constituted and interrupted through storytelling, nothing is signed and sealed. By the end, the characters escape the outcome even the novel’s prepared for. They elide the restrictions imposed upon their bodies and go on to improvise their own futures, as if to say, where there is potential for improvisation, there is potential for freedom.
March 6, 2024
toni morrison books are like cookies (i tried and failed to have just one).
this is the second book in the beloved trilogy, and therefore i had to read it after beloved, or at least theoretically did the Right Thing in doing so, but i wish i was weird and random and quirky and read them out of order.
like beloved, this explores the aftermath of a striking act of violence among loved ones, with unique perspective and writing you have to work to earn the reward of understanding. but unlike beloved, its inspiration (the titular jazz) and its characters aren't for me, and i loved its predecessor so much that this was always going to be a tough sell.
but that's a good problem to have.
bottom line: more toni morrison, please.
this is the second book in the beloved trilogy, and therefore i had to read it after beloved, or at least theoretically did the Right Thing in doing so, but i wish i was weird and random and quirky and read them out of order.
like beloved, this explores the aftermath of a striking act of violence among loved ones, with unique perspective and writing you have to work to earn the reward of understanding. but unlike beloved, its inspiration (the titular jazz) and its characters aren't for me, and i loved its predecessor so much that this was always going to be a tough sell.
but that's a good problem to have.
bottom line: more toni morrison, please.
November 15, 2021
(Book 155 from 1001 books) - Jazz, Toni Morrison
Jazz is a 1992 historical novel by Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning American author Toni Morrison.
The majority of the narrative takes place in Harlem during the 1920's; however, as the pasts of the various characters are explored, the narrative extends back to the mid-19th-century American South. The novel forms the second part of Morrison's Dantesque trilogy on African-American history, beginning with Beloved (1987) and ending with Paradise (1997).
عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «جاز»؛ نویسنده: تونی موریسون؛ نشر (آفرینه) ادبیات آمریکا؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز پنجم ماه آگوست سال2002میلادی
عنوان: جاز؛ نویسنده: تونی موریسون؛ مترجم: سهیل سمی؛ تهران، آفرینه، سال1379؛ در240ص؛ شابک9646191444؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م
رمانی با سبک «پسامدرن»، با زبانی «رمزی و سمبلیک»، ستایش از جامعه ی رنگین پوستان «آمریكایی»، در دهه های بیست و سی، از سده ی نوزدهم میلادی، روایتی از نسلی، که با پشت سر نهادن جنگ، و درگیر شدن با پیامدهایش، در جستجوی فضایی آرام، برای زیستن هستند؛ و در اندیشه ی دستیاب� به آرمانشهری همچون «سیتی»، به سر میبرند� «تونی موریسون» در این اثر، آرزوها، کشاکشها� شب زنده� داریها� و دغدغه� های این نسل را، با سخنانی کوتاه بنگاشته اند، و با ستودن آداب، رسوم، و آیینها� رنگین پوستان، واژه های خویش را، برای خوانشگران آراسته اند؛ مترجم کتاب درباره این اثر میگویند: (زبان در رمان «جاز» همه چیز است؛ شخصیتها� رمان «جاز»، با استفاده از همین زبان، پردازش شده� و درست عین کلمات، شخصیتها� سمبلیک، و در عین حال معمولی را آفریده� اند؛ ...؛ رمان «جاز» با آفرینش صحنه� های مینیاتوری همین نسل، به سمت برشی از زندگی انسان در سده معاصر پیش میرود� و تلاشها� او، برای رهاسازی خویش را، برملا میکن�.)؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 19/09/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 23/08/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Jazz is a 1992 historical novel by Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning American author Toni Morrison.
The majority of the narrative takes place in Harlem during the 1920's; however, as the pasts of the various characters are explored, the narrative extends back to the mid-19th-century American South. The novel forms the second part of Morrison's Dantesque trilogy on African-American history, beginning with Beloved (1987) and ending with Paradise (1997).
عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «جاز»؛ نویسنده: تونی موریسون؛ نشر (آفرینه) ادبیات آمریکا؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز پنجم ماه آگوست سال2002میلادی
عنوان: جاز؛ نویسنده: تونی موریسون؛ مترجم: سهیل سمی؛ تهران، آفرینه، سال1379؛ در240ص؛ شابک9646191444؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م
رمانی با سبک «پسامدرن»، با زبانی «رمزی و سمبلیک»، ستایش از جامعه ی رنگین پوستان «آمریكایی»، در دهه های بیست و سی، از سده ی نوزدهم میلادی، روایتی از نسلی، که با پشت سر نهادن جنگ، و درگیر شدن با پیامدهایش، در جستجوی فضایی آرام، برای زیستن هستند؛ و در اندیشه ی دستیاب� به آرمانشهری همچون «سیتی»، به سر میبرند� «تونی موریسون» در این اثر، آرزوها، کشاکشها� شب زنده� داریها� و دغدغه� های این نسل را، با سخنانی کوتاه بنگاشته اند، و با ستودن آداب، رسوم، و آیینها� رنگین پوستان، واژه های خویش را، برای خوانشگران آراسته اند؛ مترجم کتاب درباره این اثر میگویند: (زبان در رمان «جاز» همه چیز است؛ شخصیتها� رمان «جاز»، با استفاده از همین زبان، پردازش شده� و درست عین کلمات، شخصیتها� سمبلیک، و در عین حال معمولی را آفریده� اند؛ ...؛ رمان «جاز» با آفرینش صحنه� های مینیاتوری همین نسل، به سمت برشی از زندگی انسان در سده معاصر پیش میرود� و تلاشها� او، برای رهاسازی خویش را، برملا میکن�.)؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 19/09/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 23/08/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
February 16, 2016
2 stars
"I'm crazy about this City. Daylight slants like a razor cutting the buildings in half. In the top half I see looking faces and it's not easy to tell which are people, which the work of stonemasons. Below is a shadow where any blasé thing takes place: clarinets and lovemaking, fists and the voices of sorrowful women. A city like this one makes me dream tall and feel in on things."
Oh, how I adore the lyricism of Toni Morrison. I have had Jazz on my shelf for quite some time now, and following my admiration of The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Beloved, I couldn't wait to tear into this one. The title alone captured my imagination. Unfortunately, I was left feeling a bit confused and underwhelmed.
Set during the Jazz Age in New York City, this book had great potential. An intriguing plot description � man has an affair with a younger woman, man shoots and kills his lover (not a spoiler), man's wife attacks corpse of this young woman at her funeral! This is where the story begins and I was immediately hooked. However, just as I latched onto the narrative, it would shift. The voices changed frequently; time and setting changed often. It now became apparent that the title of the story had less to do with any musical plot than it did with the perhaps experimental style of writing. I am not an expert in jazz music, but I am definitely a fan. From Wikipedia, jazz is defined as "a spontaneity and vitality of musical production in which improvisation plays a role and contains a sonority and manner of phrasing which mirror the individuality of the performing jazz musician". I can imagine each voice in this story as a different instrument in a jazz ensemble. However, the shift from one voice or instrument to the next was too jolting, too disjointed. While this may work for me in music, I suppose I prefer a writing that flows more harmoniously and smoothly.
There were moments of brilliance shining through, as I have come to expect from this extremely gifted author. When characters were engaged in dialogue, I was immersed in the story. But the stream of consciousness feel to this book did not appeal to me overall. I have more Toni Morrison books sitting on my shelf, and I most certainly won't let my slight disappointment in this one keep me from those.
"I'm crazy about this City. Daylight slants like a razor cutting the buildings in half. In the top half I see looking faces and it's not easy to tell which are people, which the work of stonemasons. Below is a shadow where any blasé thing takes place: clarinets and lovemaking, fists and the voices of sorrowful women. A city like this one makes me dream tall and feel in on things."
Oh, how I adore the lyricism of Toni Morrison. I have had Jazz on my shelf for quite some time now, and following my admiration of The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Beloved, I couldn't wait to tear into this one. The title alone captured my imagination. Unfortunately, I was left feeling a bit confused and underwhelmed.
Set during the Jazz Age in New York City, this book had great potential. An intriguing plot description � man has an affair with a younger woman, man shoots and kills his lover (not a spoiler), man's wife attacks corpse of this young woman at her funeral! This is where the story begins and I was immediately hooked. However, just as I latched onto the narrative, it would shift. The voices changed frequently; time and setting changed often. It now became apparent that the title of the story had less to do with any musical plot than it did with the perhaps experimental style of writing. I am not an expert in jazz music, but I am definitely a fan. From Wikipedia, jazz is defined as "a spontaneity and vitality of musical production in which improvisation plays a role and contains a sonority and manner of phrasing which mirror the individuality of the performing jazz musician". I can imagine each voice in this story as a different instrument in a jazz ensemble. However, the shift from one voice or instrument to the next was too jolting, too disjointed. While this may work for me in music, I suppose I prefer a writing that flows more harmoniously and smoothly.
There were moments of brilliance shining through, as I have come to expect from this extremely gifted author. When characters were engaged in dialogue, I was immersed in the story. But the stream of consciousness feel to this book did not appeal to me overall. I have more Toni Morrison books sitting on my shelf, and I most certainly won't let my slight disappointment in this one keep me from those.
January 7, 2021
Dicen los donjuanes que la primera frase que se dice a una mujer es fundamental, que es capaz de marcar el éxito o el fracaso de la conquista. Pues bien, aunque no creo ser el primero con el que lo consigue, esta novela me ha enamorado con su primer párrafo:
Y no solo sus primeras frases, tampoco su “conversación� posterior le fue muy a la zaga. Desde el primer momento noté que a la novela le debía de estar cayendo muy bien porque era digno de encomio el esfuerzo que realizaba para gustarme y mantenerme a su lado. Yo me dejaba querer intentando disimular lo encantado que estaba, no fuera a ser que bajara su solicitud hacia mi persona.
Paseamos mucho por esa ciudad suya, me presentó a negros y a negras de interesantes a muy interesantes, me contó muchas historias tristes, alguna alegre y también brutales, me dejó entrever otras vidas, como cuando al pasar cerca de una ventana abierta oíamos voces, risas, lamentos, súplicas (pégame pero no me dejes) y música, mucha música de esa que me contó que la volvía consciente de la vida que tenía más abajo de la cintura, así como del rojo de sus labios...y estas cosas que me decía a veces me hacían pensar si no sería solo sexo lo que buscaba en mí, pero hasta esto le perdonaba cuando me susurraba al oído que era ridículo, delicioso y terrible.
En definitiva, qué les voy a decir, como otras parejas, tuvimos historias de celos, historias de gritos y besos, de azúcar y sal... aunque no sé qué pensará ella, porque, la verdad, yo nunca fui un amante ideal.
“Sssst� yo conozco a esa mujer. Vivía rodeada de pájaros en la avenida Lenox. También conozco a su marido. Se encaprichó de una chiquilla de 18 años y le dio uno de esos arrebatos que te calan hasta lo más hondo y que a él le metió dentro tanta pena y tanta felicidad que mató a la muchacha de un tiro solo para que aquel sentimiento no acabara nunca. Cuando la mujer, que se llama Violet, fue al entierro para ver a la chica y acuchillarle la cara sin vida, la derribaron al suelo y la expulsaron de la iglesia. Entonces echó a correr, en medio de toda aquella nieve, y en cuanto estuvo de vuelta en su apartamento sacó a los pájaros de las jaulas y les abrió las ventanas para que emprendiesen el vuelo o para que se helaran, incluido el loro, que decía: “Te quiero�.�(Leí por ahí que ese sssst que da inicio al texto es el ruido que hace la aguja en el disco antes del inicio de la música.)
Y no solo sus primeras frases, tampoco su “conversación� posterior le fue muy a la zaga. Desde el primer momento noté que a la novela le debía de estar cayendo muy bien porque era digno de encomio el esfuerzo que realizaba para gustarme y mantenerme a su lado. Yo me dejaba querer intentando disimular lo encantado que estaba, no fuera a ser que bajara su solicitud hacia mi persona.
Paseamos mucho por esa ciudad suya, me presentó a negros y a negras de interesantes a muy interesantes, me contó muchas historias tristes, alguna alegre y también brutales, me dejó entrever otras vidas, como cuando al pasar cerca de una ventana abierta oíamos voces, risas, lamentos, súplicas (pégame pero no me dejes) y música, mucha música de esa que me contó que la volvía consciente de la vida que tenía más abajo de la cintura, así como del rojo de sus labios...y estas cosas que me decía a veces me hacían pensar si no sería solo sexo lo que buscaba en mí, pero hasta esto le perdonaba cuando me susurraba al oído que era ridículo, delicioso y terrible.
En definitiva, qué les voy a decir, como otras parejas, tuvimos historias de celos, historias de gritos y besos, de azúcar y sal... aunque no sé qué pensará ella, porque, la verdad, yo nunca fui un amante ideal.
September 2, 2013
got lost in all the lovely words, loved getting lost. minor note but major emotions. narrative glides down perfect prose pathways and through poetic passages to different destinations, into one mind and out of another, into many minds, past future past future, man. who knows where the next road goes, probably somewhere bad, tragedy and bloodshed and murder and all kinds of fucked up and twisted emotions, but it all reads so pretty. can I understand such things? I don't know but I can try. this is a history of sorts; it also feels like a beautiful bad dream, my favorite kind.
February 9, 2025
Read this book since the early 2000s, then several times over- up to 2020s and beyond in small doses of reading pleasure:
This might be my favorite Toni Morrison line of all time�
"Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it." (Morrison 135).
This is one of Professor Morrison's masterpieces. My feelings for its beauty have deepened even further, its poetic language haunting, full of sorrow and joy and flowing with forgiveness and music.
Written as a follow-up to "Beloved", It’s an ambitious and dizzying achievement that intimately chronicles the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North of the 1920s. Frenetic and wildly cinematic- this is the one Morrison novel I would love to see adapted as a film or series.
Though this is an epic, momentous event in American history, Morison meticulously recreates a cinematic Harem, 1926 on a rather intimate scale, “the first sight of the City that danced with them proving already how much it loved them, like a million more, they could hardly wait to get there and love it back”�(Morrison 32).
However, it’s a juicy, lurid tale of sex and murder that takes center stage on her tragic and poetic narrative, riffing on the violence of the blues laced with narrators that shift in and out like a Greek chorus.
Like a jazz solo, Morrison improvises her tale of woe and introduces the reader to the tragic love triangle comprising of cosmetic salesman Joe Trace, his teen mistress Dorcas whom he shoots and kills out of jealousy and murderous passion; and Violet Trace- Joe's put-upon and traumatized wife who becomes temporarily insane. I also believe she is one of literature's greatest female characters: complex, angry, and rather poignant.
Like jazz, the novel riffs on thoughts, written in stream of-consciousness, and surreal images that are both beautiful, bright- bringing to light the hustle and bustle of New York; and images that are violent, and bloodied, “When they fall in love with a city, it is forever�(Morrison 33).
It is an unforgettable and violent valentine to the greatest City in the world, with an omniscient narrator that observes and comments on a love of a city that can be seen as a lover in itself:
“I’m crazy about this City. Daylight slants like a razor cutting the buildings in half. In the top half I see looking faces and it's not easy to tell which are people, which the work of stonemasons. Below is shadow were any blasé thing takes place: clarinets and lovemaking, fists and the voices of sorrowful women� (Morrison 9).
With that said, with magical lyrical passages like these, this book takes it place among the greatest works of American literature.
This might be my favorite Toni Morrison line of all time�
"Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it." (Morrison 135).
This is one of Professor Morrison's masterpieces. My feelings for its beauty have deepened even further, its poetic language haunting, full of sorrow and joy and flowing with forgiveness and music.
Written as a follow-up to "Beloved", It’s an ambitious and dizzying achievement that intimately chronicles the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North of the 1920s. Frenetic and wildly cinematic- this is the one Morrison novel I would love to see adapted as a film or series.
Though this is an epic, momentous event in American history, Morison meticulously recreates a cinematic Harem, 1926 on a rather intimate scale, “the first sight of the City that danced with them proving already how much it loved them, like a million more, they could hardly wait to get there and love it back”�(Morrison 32).
However, it’s a juicy, lurid tale of sex and murder that takes center stage on her tragic and poetic narrative, riffing on the violence of the blues laced with narrators that shift in and out like a Greek chorus.
Like a jazz solo, Morrison improvises her tale of woe and introduces the reader to the tragic love triangle comprising of cosmetic salesman Joe Trace, his teen mistress Dorcas whom he shoots and kills out of jealousy and murderous passion; and Violet Trace- Joe's put-upon and traumatized wife who becomes temporarily insane. I also believe she is one of literature's greatest female characters: complex, angry, and rather poignant.
Like jazz, the novel riffs on thoughts, written in stream of-consciousness, and surreal images that are both beautiful, bright- bringing to light the hustle and bustle of New York; and images that are violent, and bloodied, “When they fall in love with a city, it is forever�(Morrison 33).
It is an unforgettable and violent valentine to the greatest City in the world, with an omniscient narrator that observes and comments on a love of a city that can be seen as a lover in itself:
“I’m crazy about this City. Daylight slants like a razor cutting the buildings in half. In the top half I see looking faces and it's not easy to tell which are people, which the work of stonemasons. Below is shadow were any blasé thing takes place: clarinets and lovemaking, fists and the voices of sorrowful women� (Morrison 9).
With that said, with magical lyrical passages like these, this book takes it place among the greatest works of American literature.
February 8, 2023
Not quite a true 4 stars, but boy does Toni Morrison know how to end a story. (I felt this way about her novel, Love, too, which I read a couple years ago). She’ll reveal some detail that breaks open the heart of the story in a way that reaches across the divide of the specific people in time and place (here, a group of neighbors in 1926 Harlem) and into the well we share, the well that makes us human. Her endings also shed light on all that came before, causing me to reimagine the events and characters in her story with a fuller sense of truth. She’s like a goddess of the heart, which takes true intelligence, along with guts: the guts to be vulnerable, and then to explore so deeply, and with such honestly, that the simplicity of it is beauty itself. It is purity and clarity and love and strength all at the same time. It is pain and sorrow, and it is the acknowledgement of how far people can go �
in both the damage of and the propping up of another being � when they love. Love, in her world, can kill you, and oh how that resonates for me right now.
This is the story of a love triangle, and ultimately, a marriage. No one ever really knows what goes on between two people, and marriage is one of the most complex relationships we’ll ever know. This marriage is full of unique nuances, ones that expose another way to be. I felt like Morrison had me gawking and laughing at first from a distance, and then drew me closer and closer until I understood others, and then recognized us all.
in both the damage of and the propping up of another being � when they love. Love, in her world, can kill you, and oh how that resonates for me right now.
This is the story of a love triangle, and ultimately, a marriage. No one ever really knows what goes on between two people, and marriage is one of the most complex relationships we’ll ever know. This marriage is full of unique nuances, ones that expose another way to be. I felt like Morrison had me gawking and laughing at first from a distance, and then drew me closer and closer until I understood others, and then recognized us all.
October 29, 2024
Ich versuche es mal auf Deutsch. Bisher ist es mir nicht geglückt, Morrisons Bücher auf sinnvolle Art und Weise zu rezensieren. In ihren Romanen steckt so viel, dass ich nie die richtigen Worte finde. Am liebsten würde ich über alles sprechen, aber ich bin jedes Mal so überwältigt, verwirrt und vor den Kopf gestoßen, dass ich letzten Endes über nichts so richtig spreche. Mal schauen, ob mir das mit Jazz etwas besser gelingt.
Obwohl Toni Morrison eine populäre Schriftstellerin ist, vielleicht sogar die letzte des US-Amerikanischen Kanons (?), sind nicht all ihre Bücher gleich beliebt und bekannt. Wo wahrscheinlich jeder von The Bluest Eye und Beloved gehört hat, wird es wohl auch einige geben, denen Tar Baby und auch Jazz nicht so viel sagen.
Jazz, erstmals 1992 erschienen und somit der letzte Roman bevor Morrison den Nobelpreis für Literatur gewann, ist der zweite Teil einer lose zusammenhängenden Trilogie, die mit Beloved (1987) anfängt und Paradise (1998) schließt. Diese "Trilogie" wird oft mit Dantes Göttlicher Komödie verglichen und soll die gleiche Dreiteilung � "Inferno", "Purgatorio" und "Paradiso" � aufweisen. Persönlich sehe ich diese Parallelen (noch) nicht. Es ist wahr, dass wir uns innerhalb der drei Bücher chronologisch durch die Zeit bewegen, angefangen im 19. Jahrhundert zur Zeit der Versklavung Schwarzer Menschen in den USA, über das Harlem der 20er-Jahre und schließlich hin zu einem "moderneren" Amerika der 70er-Jahre. Aber nennenswerte Parallelen zu Dante konnte ich bisher nicht erkennen. Andererseits fällt es mir immer unheimlich schwierig, Morrisons Romane thematisch und auf analytischer Ebene zu durchdringen, weswegen ich mir sicher bin, dass mir viele Referenzen und Interpretationsansätze durch die Lappen gegangen sind.
Der erste Paragraph von Jazz setzt perfekt den Ton für die Geschichte und offenbart auch schon vieles, worauf wir uns einstellen können: "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 feeling 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.'"
Ich liebe alles an diesem Paragraphen. Alleine das "sth" im ersten Satz (auf Deutsch wohl eher mit einem "Tss" zu übersetzen), der Laut, der entsteht, wenn man scharf die Luft einzieht und über etwas oder jemanden urteilt. Der erste Satz ist die Personifikation eines Kopfschüttelns: "Sth, I know that woman." Und holla, kennen wir nicht alle Frauen, wie Violet Trace.
In der Einführung schreibt Morrison, dass sie in Jazz der Idee von "love as perpetual mourning" ("Liebe als ewige Trauer") auf den Grund gehen wollte. Diese Idee wird anhand von unterschiedlicher Charakteren verhandelt. Auf der einen Seite hätten wir Violet und Joe Trace, beide Mitte 50, und seit Jahrzehnten miteinander verheiratet. Auf der anderen Seite haben wir die junge Dorcas, ein 18-jähriges Mädchen, das zu Joes Geliebten wird und ihm letzten Endes zum Opfer fällt.
Dorcas wird in ihrem Tod, noch mehr als zu Lebzeiten, einen Schatten über die Beziehung der Traces werfen. Sowohl Joe als auch Violet sind auf eigene Weise "obsessed" mit ihr. Eifersucht und Galle. Nächtliches Aufstehen und Betrachten des Fotos von Dorcas. Auch Felice, Dorcas beste Freundin, wird irgendwann Teil von diesem toxischen Dreiecksgeflecht, auch sie stolpert in diese Vorhölle, um mal bei Dante zu bleiben.
Dorcas sucht Violet heim und lässt sie nicht mehr los, dass Violet sich sogar mit Alice anfreundet, um mehr über Dorcas zu erfahren. Sie möchte alles über Dorcas Wissen, über ihre Haut, ihr Haar, ihre Verführungskünste. Genauso wie ihr Ehemann Joe ist auch Violet von der Idee der Jugend angezogen. Sie füttert ihren eigenen Selbsthass, den Hass auf ihr Aussehen und Alter, indem sie sich in Dorcas' Jugendlichkeit und Schönheit hineinsteigert.
Violet und Joe (und auch Alice und Felice) trauern alle auf ihre eigene Weise um die junge Dorcas, weil die sie an die Tochter erinnert, die sie nie hatten, und an ihre eigene Jugend, die ihnen noch vom Elend der Südstaaten geraubt worden war. Wochenlang, monatelang trauern sie. Jeder für sich. Aber dann finden sie wieder als Paar zueinander. Ganz langsam. Schließlich halten sie sich unter den Laken fest. Sie werden zusammen alt werden.
In scharfsinnigen, mitreißenden Vignetten, die auf das Leben unterschiedlicher Charaktere des Romans fokussieren, porträtiert Morrison das Leben Schwarzer Menschen, die mit dem umgehen müssen, was ihnen gegeben wurde; Menschen, die machtlos sind, ihr Schicksal zu ändern.
Jazz erzählt die Geschichte von Violet und Joe, eine Geschichte über Sex, Passion und Verzweiflung. Liebe, Eifersucht und Melancholie. Das Wort Jazz fällt nie. Und dennoch ist das Buch eine Hommage. Es pulsiert wie ein Stück Jazz. Morrison erobert die "Jazz Age" zurück, die von weißen Schriftstellern wie F. Scott Fitzgerald beschlagnahmt wurde. Und sie gibt sie uns Schwarzen zurück. Uns und unserer Musik. Selten hat Toni Morrison ihren Stil so auf die Spitze getrieben, diese spielerische Virtuosität, die sie immer besessen hat. Eine raue, wilde surrealistische Lyrik lässt die Seiten klingen, eine Sprache, die getrieben ist von der Lust am Sprung, am Bruch, am Mix. Slang, hochgejazzt zum Silberklang.
Jazz ist wie die Musik, die dem Roman seinen Titel gab. Rhythmisch, gefühlvoll, selbst in den wildesten Momenten kontrolliert, gekonnt, subversiv und unwiderstehlich verführerisch. Er entspringt dem Schmerz und der Freude und ruft diese hervor. Er beklagt und feiert Schwarze Erfahrungen; er greift Themen auf und variiert sie; er stürzt, schwebt und verweilt. Morrison schreibt auf eine Art und Weise, die einzigartig ist. Nobody does it like her. Sie ist nicht an linearem Storytelling interessiert, sie moralisiert nicht, sie bietet einem keinen "easy fix" an. Stattdessen lädt sie ein, sie lädt dazu ein, das eigene Innere nach Außen zu kehren und sich aufrütteln zu lassen, getrieben von der Musik.
Obwohl Toni Morrison eine populäre Schriftstellerin ist, vielleicht sogar die letzte des US-Amerikanischen Kanons (?), sind nicht all ihre Bücher gleich beliebt und bekannt. Wo wahrscheinlich jeder von The Bluest Eye und Beloved gehört hat, wird es wohl auch einige geben, denen Tar Baby und auch Jazz nicht so viel sagen.
Jazz, erstmals 1992 erschienen und somit der letzte Roman bevor Morrison den Nobelpreis für Literatur gewann, ist der zweite Teil einer lose zusammenhängenden Trilogie, die mit Beloved (1987) anfängt und Paradise (1998) schließt. Diese "Trilogie" wird oft mit Dantes Göttlicher Komödie verglichen und soll die gleiche Dreiteilung � "Inferno", "Purgatorio" und "Paradiso" � aufweisen. Persönlich sehe ich diese Parallelen (noch) nicht. Es ist wahr, dass wir uns innerhalb der drei Bücher chronologisch durch die Zeit bewegen, angefangen im 19. Jahrhundert zur Zeit der Versklavung Schwarzer Menschen in den USA, über das Harlem der 20er-Jahre und schließlich hin zu einem "moderneren" Amerika der 70er-Jahre. Aber nennenswerte Parallelen zu Dante konnte ich bisher nicht erkennen. Andererseits fällt es mir immer unheimlich schwierig, Morrisons Romane thematisch und auf analytischer Ebene zu durchdringen, weswegen ich mir sicher bin, dass mir viele Referenzen und Interpretationsansätze durch die Lappen gegangen sind.
Der erste Paragraph von Jazz setzt perfekt den Ton für die Geschichte und offenbart auch schon vieles, worauf wir uns einstellen können: "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 feeling 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.'"
Ich liebe alles an diesem Paragraphen. Alleine das "sth" im ersten Satz (auf Deutsch wohl eher mit einem "Tss" zu übersetzen), der Laut, der entsteht, wenn man scharf die Luft einzieht und über etwas oder jemanden urteilt. Der erste Satz ist die Personifikation eines Kopfschüttelns: "Sth, I know that woman." Und holla, kennen wir nicht alle Frauen, wie Violet Trace.
In der Einführung schreibt Morrison, dass sie in Jazz der Idee von "love as perpetual mourning" ("Liebe als ewige Trauer") auf den Grund gehen wollte. Diese Idee wird anhand von unterschiedlicher Charakteren verhandelt. Auf der einen Seite hätten wir Violet und Joe Trace, beide Mitte 50, und seit Jahrzehnten miteinander verheiratet. Auf der anderen Seite haben wir die junge Dorcas, ein 18-jähriges Mädchen, das zu Joes Geliebten wird und ihm letzten Endes zum Opfer fällt.
Dorcas wird in ihrem Tod, noch mehr als zu Lebzeiten, einen Schatten über die Beziehung der Traces werfen. Sowohl Joe als auch Violet sind auf eigene Weise "obsessed" mit ihr. Eifersucht und Galle. Nächtliches Aufstehen und Betrachten des Fotos von Dorcas. Auch Felice, Dorcas beste Freundin, wird irgendwann Teil von diesem toxischen Dreiecksgeflecht, auch sie stolpert in diese Vorhölle, um mal bei Dante zu bleiben.
Dorcas, girl, your first time and mine. I chose you. Nobody gave you to me. Nobody said that’s the one for you. I picked you out. Wrong time, yep, and doing wrong by my wife. But the picking out, the choosing. 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. My mind. And I made up my mind to follow you too.Doch fangen wir von vorne an: Damals in Harlem, 1926. Joe erschießt seine junge Geliebte, als die sich einen anderen nimmt. Und Violet schneidet ihr dann im Sarg ins tote Gesicht. Alle wissen Bescheid - und schweigen. Das Gesetz ist weiß und Dorcas Tante und Vormund Alice will "kein Geld für hilflose Anwälte oder lachende Polizisten ausgeben".
Dorcas sucht Violet heim und lässt sie nicht mehr los, dass Violet sich sogar mit Alice anfreundet, um mehr über Dorcas zu erfahren. Sie möchte alles über Dorcas Wissen, über ihre Haut, ihr Haar, ihre Verführungskünste. Genauso wie ihr Ehemann Joe ist auch Violet von der Idee der Jugend angezogen. Sie füttert ihren eigenen Selbsthass, den Hass auf ihr Aussehen und Alter, indem sie sich in Dorcas' Jugendlichkeit und Schönheit hineinsteigert.
Violet und Joe (und auch Alice und Felice) trauern alle auf ihre eigene Weise um die junge Dorcas, weil die sie an die Tochter erinnert, die sie nie hatten, und an ihre eigene Jugend, die ihnen noch vom Elend der Südstaaten geraubt worden war. Wochenlang, monatelang trauern sie. Jeder für sich. Aber dann finden sie wieder als Paar zueinander. Ganz langsam. Schließlich halten sie sich unter den Laken fest. Sie werden zusammen alt werden.
In scharfsinnigen, mitreißenden Vignetten, die auf das Leben unterschiedlicher Charaktere des Romans fokussieren, porträtiert Morrison das Leben Schwarzer Menschen, die mit dem umgehen müssen, was ihnen gegeben wurde; Menschen, die machtlos sind, ihr Schicksal zu ändern.
“Forgot it was mine. My life. I just ran up and down the streets wishing I was somebody else.�Morrison führt uns von Harlem zurück in den Süden, aufs Land. Dort, wo Violets Großmutter als Dienstmädchen einer wohlhabenden weißen Frau arbeitete. Dort, wo Joes Mutter allein und verwildert auf Maisfeldern lebte. Dort, wo Golden Gray nach seinem Schwarzen Vater suchte, um ihn zu erschießen, da er seine weiße Mutter "im Stich" ließ.
Jazz erzählt die Geschichte von Violet und Joe, eine Geschichte über Sex, Passion und Verzweiflung. Liebe, Eifersucht und Melancholie. Das Wort Jazz fällt nie. Und dennoch ist das Buch eine Hommage. Es pulsiert wie ein Stück Jazz. Morrison erobert die "Jazz Age" zurück, die von weißen Schriftstellern wie F. Scott Fitzgerald beschlagnahmt wurde. Und sie gibt sie uns Schwarzen zurück. Uns und unserer Musik. Selten hat Toni Morrison ihren Stil so auf die Spitze getrieben, diese spielerische Virtuosität, die sie immer besessen hat. Eine raue, wilde surrealistische Lyrik lässt die Seiten klingen, eine Sprache, die getrieben ist von der Lust am Sprung, am Bruch, am Mix. Slang, hochgejazzt zum Silberklang.
Jazz ist wie die Musik, die dem Roman seinen Titel gab. Rhythmisch, gefühlvoll, selbst in den wildesten Momenten kontrolliert, gekonnt, subversiv und unwiderstehlich verführerisch. Er entspringt dem Schmerz und der Freude und ruft diese hervor. Er beklagt und feiert Schwarze Erfahrungen; er greift Themen auf und variiert sie; er stürzt, schwebt und verweilt. Morrison schreibt auf eine Art und Weise, die einzigartig ist. Nobody does it like her. Sie ist nicht an linearem Storytelling interessiert, sie moralisiert nicht, sie bietet einem keinen "easy fix" an. Stattdessen lädt sie ein, sie lädt dazu ein, das eigene Innere nach Außen zu kehren und sich aufrütteln zu lassen, getrieben von der Musik.
December 5, 2018
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 feeling going. When the woman, her name is Violet, went to the funeral to see the funeral and 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."
With this terrific first paragraph which encapsulates most of the story, Toni Morrison begins Jazz, her short novel which however, covers an extremely broad canvas. It is the story of Violet and Joe Trace and their waning marriage; it is the story of the puritanical Alice Manfred and her flighty niece Dorcas, who falls for Joe; it is the story of Golden Gray, the mulatto born of a black father and a white mother; it is the story of the Wild Woman, Joe Trace's mother, never seen yet always present in the woods... but above all, it is the story of Harlem in the 1920's and its sinful music: jazz.
Morrison uses a jagged storytelling style, with the narrative shifting in the verbal equivalent of jump cuts between people, places and events. Linearity is purposefully foregone, with the author wrong-footing the reader intentionally in many places. In the middle of the novel, when we are neck-deep in the story of Violet, Joe, Dorcas and Alice, the narrative suddenly jumps to the story of Golden Gray on the quest for his father; who initially has only the most tenuous of connections to the tale, overall. The author confuses us thoroughly before tying the two threads together.
Toni Morrison here, even while being the omnipresent narrator, confesses to being not in full charge of her characters: she says
I ought to get out of this place. Avoid the window; leave the hole I cut through the door to get in lives instead of having one of my own. It was loving the City that distracted me and gave me ideas. Made me think I could speak its loud voice and make that sound sound human. I missed the people altogether.
I thought I knew them and wasn't worried that they didn't really know about me. Now it's clear why they contradicted me at every turn: they knew me all along. Out of the corners of their eyes they watched me. And when I was feeling most invisible, being tight-lipped, silent and unobservable, they were whispering about me to each other. They knew how little I could be counted on; how poorly, how shabbily my know-it-all self covered helplessness. That when I invented stories about them - and doing it seemed to me so fine - I was completely in their hands, managed without mercy...
The story here is writing itself, using the hapless author as a medium. To understand how its possible, one has to understand the City, and its unique music which made even unwilling people dance to its jagged and kaleidoscopic melody.
Jazz music evolved out of the inherent need for the black people to express themselves, even when their arms, legs and even spirit were chained. Arising out of Africa's primitive music traditions, jazz was a fusion of Africa with Europe. It is non-linear and jagged; a pot-pourri of various notes and beats. Nobody would call it classical; there were many who thought it sinful; but you can't deny one thing - it makes you dance.
Come dance, with Toni Morrison. The night is still young.
April 21, 2022
I heard Toni Morrison read from this book in a bookstore in Brooklyn when it came out. It was a magical experience. However, this is not my absolute favorite Toni Morrison book - it is still a wonderful story full of music and life.
List of all of Toni's amazing work - come and vote for your favorite!
Fino's Toni Morrison Reviews:
The Bluest Eye
Sula
Song Of Solomon
Tar Baby
Beloved
Jazz
Paradise
List of all of Toni's amazing work - come and vote for your favorite!
Fino's Toni Morrison Reviews:
The Bluest Eye
Sula
Song Of Solomon
Tar Baby
Beloved
Jazz
Paradise
June 30, 2016
“I’m crazy about this City. Daylight slants like a razor cutting the buildings in half. In the top half I see looking faces and it’s not easy to tell which are people, which the work of stonemasons. Below is shadow were any blasé thing takes place: clarinets and lovemaking, fists and the voices of sorrowful women. A city like this one makes me dream tall and feel in on things. Hep. It’s the bright steel rocking above the shade below that does it.�- Toni Morrison, Jazz
Wynston Marsalis said, “Jazz is a conversation, but a nuanced, swift, and complicated one�, and over time I’ve come to learn and understand this too. What’s even more interesting to me is how the improvisation in jazz can be applied to life.
The story starts with Violet, a woman in her 50s, mutilating the corpse of teenager Dorcas, the former lover (and murder victim) of her husband, Joe Trace. From this passionate scene at Dorcas� funeral, we get a very emotional story which seems to be an improv, with the story lines reacting both with the city’s surroundings but also with history and personal stories.
To me, the city backdrop and how Morrison works that into her story, is the best part of the book, in particular when the city is contrasted with the rural areas the main characters grew up in. The city carries with it its own energy and I felt it held a lot of hope and promise for people who had survived slavery and life in the countryside. Moving to the city and encountering a whole new lifestyle was a huge turning point in these people’s lives, and I like how Morrison shows that a change in scene can change everything, similar to her approach in Tar Baby; love is different in the city and in the countryside:
“Little of that makes for love, but it does pump desire. The woman who churned a man’s blood as she leaned all alone on a fence by a country road might not expect even to catch his eye in the City. But if she is clipping quickly down the big-city street in heels, swinging her purse, or sitting on a stoop with a cool beer in her hand, dangling her shoe from the toes of her foot, the man, reacting to her posture, to soft skin on stone, the weight of the building stressing the delicate, dangling shoe, is captured. And he’d think it was the woman he wanted, and not some combination of curved stone, and a swinging, high-heeled shoe moving in and out of sunlight. He would know right away the deception, the trick of shapes and light and movement, but it wouldn’t matter at all because the deception was part of it too.�
The first time I read this I was quite frustrated by the character of Joe Trace; male violence is always difficult to read about, and it’s even more difficult when you know the perpetrator doesn’t get the necessary punishment. Yet, and I’ve seen again and again with Morrison (and this is one of the things I admire about her the most), she is able to relay the facts in a non-judgemental way, and somehow she allows us to feel some sort of compassion.
Apart from Dorcas, the murdered teenager, the character who I felt for most in this story is Violet. This is a lady who was clearly depressed and searching for something in life. At the age of 56 she said ,”I want some fat in this life.� This is a lady who experienced childhood tragedy, worked hard, was misunderstood, betrayed by her husband, and became the subject of gossip by her neighbours:
“This notion of rest, it’s attractive to her, but I don’t think she would like it. They are all like that, these women. Waiting for the ease, the space that need not be filled with anything other than the drift of their own thoughts. But they wouldn’t like it. They are busy thinking of ways to be busier because such a space of nothing pressing to do would knock them down. No fields of cowslips will rush into that opening, nor mornings free of flies and heat when the light is shy. No. Not at all. They fill their minds and hands with soap and repair and dicey confrontations because what is waiting for them, in a suddenly idle moment, is the seep of rage. Molten. Thick and slow-moving. Mindful and particular about what in its path it chooses to bury.�
Jazz is an emotional and a very beautiful read. Toni Morrison’s writing style is.
November 28, 2022
[If you haven't watched the documentary Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, do yourself a favor and find it somewhere.]
Hey Harlem. Gossip Girl here. And I have the biggest news ever. One of my many sources, Chloe31, sends us this: “Spotted at funeral, knife in hand: Violet Trace.� Was it only weeks ago our Dead Girl was warming Joe Trace’s bed? And suddenly, she’s dead. Don't believe me? See for yourselves. Lucky for us, Chloe31 sent proof. Thanks for the novel, Toni. Who am I? That’s one secret I’ll never tell. So until next time, you know you love me. Gossip Girl.
(Meatier than , but less labyrinthine than —it may be my favorite Toni Morrison yet. Prohibition, jazz, New York City, and scenes from a marriage. The author titled it Jazz, but it could just as easily have been called Love—a later Toni Morrison title. Great things are achieved with only a handful of characters, including the gossipy unidentified narrator. Have I mentioned that books set in New York City just do it for me? Despite my doubts, this one didn’t disappoint.)
Hey Harlem. Gossip Girl here. And I have the biggest news ever. One of my many sources, Chloe31, sends us this: “Spotted at funeral, knife in hand: Violet Trace.� Was it only weeks ago our Dead Girl was warming Joe Trace’s bed? And suddenly, she’s dead. Don't believe me? See for yourselves. Lucky for us, Chloe31 sent proof. Thanks for the novel, Toni. Who am I? That’s one secret I’ll never tell. So until next time, you know you love me. Gossip Girl.
(Meatier than , but less labyrinthine than —it may be my favorite Toni Morrison yet. Prohibition, jazz, New York City, and scenes from a marriage. The author titled it Jazz, but it could just as easily have been called Love—a later Toni Morrison title. Great things are achieved with only a handful of characters, including the gossipy unidentified narrator. Have I mentioned that books set in New York City just do it for me? Despite my doubts, this one didn’t disappoint.)
May 14, 2020
A Scandalous Trio
Jazz music is rarely the immediate subject matter of this exceptional novel. However, jazz influences much of the novel's structure and atmosphere. The narrator describes a party in terms of “Red dresses. Yellow shoes. And, of course, race music to urge them on.�
The three main protagonists � Dorcas (an 18 year old girl), Joe (a handsome 50 year old cosmetics salesman) and Violet (Joe's pretty 50 year old wife) � form an ensemble, a trio, “a scandalising threesome", if not exactly a menage a trois.
The three characters are introduced, and the essence of the novel's plot is set out, in the first paragraph. In each of the following chapters, Toni Morrison delves into some of the past of each character as well as their shared past. It's as if each chapter is a solo that enables the character (or the narrator on their behalf) to improvise and elaborate on the main riff of the novel.
Crazy About This City of Jazz
Jazz became a slang term for sexual intercourse soon after its creation as a musical form. It's possible that this is the main connotation of the word used in the title. The novel seems to be primarily interested in sex, lust, desire, touch, seduction, passion, romance, loneliness, longing, craving and love.
The novel is set in Harlem in 1926. Earlier, in 1906, Joe and Violet (the descendents of black slaves) left rural Vesper County, Virginia, and moved to New York, attracted by the music and romance of the city, and the potential for better-paid jobs:
Private Cracks
The narrator says Violet has “private cracks". She suffers from a fragmented self:
Joe and Violet disagree over whether to have children, and presumably are now beyond the age when it is possible or convenient. Violet stares at children in the street, and goes to bed cuddling a toy doll each night, although she and Joe aren’t obviously estranged. (“He's what I got. He's what I got.�) Violet explains her plight in simple terms:
To Freeze or Fly
Which brings us back to the first paragraph on the first page:
This language is typical of the novel. It's casual, almost conversational, yet somehow dense with information and detail. At the same time, it's both imaginative and lyrical.
Reckless, Reciprocal Love
At the end of the novel, the narrator reveals her (?) own views on the quest for love:
This focus on reciprocity seems to be a natural extension of the question of identity or the self of not just black Americans, but all people of whatever race or background, which might account for the success of Toni Morrison's novel with white readers.
Paradoxically, this realisation occurs at the level of the narrator (an omniscient narrator who refers to herself as a “know-it-all self�) and the reader. It doesn't seem to emerge from the relationship between any two of the three protagonists. Indeed, it contrasts with their relationships. Perhaps, literature, art and music are the substitute for love, where it can't be found between two people. In the case of jazz, “the body is the vehicle, not the point.� It helps us to “reach...for something beyond, way beyond and way, way down underneath tissue.�
SOUNDTRACK:
["A Thorn Here, A Spike There"]
Jazz music is rarely the immediate subject matter of this exceptional novel. However, jazz influences much of the novel's structure and atmosphere. The narrator describes a party in terms of “Red dresses. Yellow shoes. And, of course, race music to urge them on.�
The three main protagonists � Dorcas (an 18 year old girl), Joe (a handsome 50 year old cosmetics salesman) and Violet (Joe's pretty 50 year old wife) � form an ensemble, a trio, “a scandalising threesome", if not exactly a menage a trois.
The three characters are introduced, and the essence of the novel's plot is set out, in the first paragraph. In each of the following chapters, Toni Morrison delves into some of the past of each character as well as their shared past. It's as if each chapter is a solo that enables the character (or the narrator on their behalf) to improvise and elaborate on the main riff of the novel.
Crazy About This City of Jazz
Jazz became a slang term for sexual intercourse soon after its creation as a musical form. It's possible that this is the main connotation of the word used in the title. The novel seems to be primarily interested in sex, lust, desire, touch, seduction, passion, romance, loneliness, longing, craving and love.
The novel is set in Harlem in 1926. Earlier, in 1906, Joe and Violet (the descendents of black slaves) left rural Vesper County, Virginia, and moved to New York, attracted by the music and romance of the city, and the potential for better-paid jobs:
“Like a million more [running from want and violence] they could hardly wait to get there and love it back...
"There, in a city, they are not so much new as themselves: their stronger, riskier selves...
"I'm crazy about this City...
"[It was] a City seeping music that begged and challenged each and every day. ‘Come,� it said. ‘Come and do wrong.�...
"It was the music. The dirty, get-on-down music the women sang and the men played and both danced to, close and shameless or apart and wild...
"Where you can find danger or be it; where you can fight till you drop and smile at the knife when it misses and when it doesn't.�
Private Cracks
The narrator says Violet has “private cracks". She suffers from a fragmented self:
“I call them cracks because that is what they were. Not openings or breaks, but dark fissures in the globe light of the day...
"Sometimes when Violet isn't paying attention she stumbles into these cracks, like the time when, instead of putting her left heel forward, she stepped back and folded her legs in order to sit in the street.�
Joe and Violet disagree over whether to have children, and presumably are now beyond the age when it is possible or convenient. Violet stares at children in the street, and goes to bed cuddling a toy doll each night, although she and Joe aren’t obviously estranged. (“He's what I got. He's what I got.�) Violet explains her plight in simple terms:
“I messed up my own life. Before I came north I made sense and so did the world. We didn't have nothing but we didn't miss it...What's the world for if you can't make it up the way you want it?�
To Freeze or Fly
Which brings us back to the first paragraph on the first page:
“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 deep down, spooky loves that made him so sad and happy he shot her just to keep the feeling 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.�"
This language is typical of the novel. It's casual, almost conversational, yet somehow dense with information and detail. At the same time, it's both imaginative and lyrical.
Reckless, Reciprocal Love
At the end of the novel, the narrator reveals her (?) own views on the quest for love:
“I have...longed to be able to say...'that I have loved only you, surrendered my whole self reckless to you and nobody else. That I want you to love me back and show it to me. That I love the way you hold me, how close you let me be to you...’�
This focus on reciprocity seems to be a natural extension of the question of identity or the self of not just black Americans, but all people of whatever race or background, which might account for the success of Toni Morrison's novel with white readers.
Paradoxically, this realisation occurs at the level of the narrator (an omniscient narrator who refers to herself as a “know-it-all self�) and the reader. It doesn't seem to emerge from the relationship between any two of the three protagonists. Indeed, it contrasts with their relationships. Perhaps, literature, art and music are the substitute for love, where it can't be found between two people. In the case of jazz, “the body is the vehicle, not the point.� It helps us to “reach...for something beyond, way beyond and way, way down underneath tissue.�
SOUNDTRACK:
["A Thorn Here, A Spike There"]
March 1, 2021
Reread
4.5, upped a half-star from my original rating: My stars always reflect my reading experience. If I read this a third time (and I may, one day), I think I’ll be a better reader of it and I could achieve those full 5 stars.
While the subject matter of Jazz is not as difficult as that of —though make no mistake, the darkness is here, underneath, to the side, or overcome (to a certain extent)—and its tone is lighter—the characters, freed from slavery, leaving sharecropping, run out of town with the burning and lynching of others, have more agency than before (any agency is more than none) now that they are in the City—in many ways this work is structurally more challenging than Beloved, with its multiple narrators: an “I� that might be the City, sometimes, or might be the author herself, most times; characters who take their turn telling their stories, expressed in quotations, as if they are talking to someone, but to whom might remain mysterious. A case for the first-person narrator being the writer herself becomes more evident in a beautiful section (my favorite) that describes the narrator’s evolving feelings toward a character named Golden I have been careless and stupid and it infuriates me to discover (again) how unreliable I am and with a lovely passage near the end that states her expectations for Joe and Violet have been thwarted.
Recurring images of birds (parrots and redwings); wells of water that kill and nourish; caves that hide and nurture as a parent is searched for (reminding me of ) make for a rich reading experience. After the first chapter, the beginning of each subsequent chapter riffs on a word/idea/feeling/scene of the paragraph that came right before it, but from the viewpoint of a different character or narrator. I’m sure the riffing has been noted before and described as lyrical, as fitting for the new music of the time and place. But I want to go back to the aforementioned agency due to the time and place.
When Joe tells his story, he enumerates how he “changed into new seven times,� starting from the time he named himself. Violet feels split in two, thinks of how that Violet did the things she can’t comprehend the other Violet doing. Near the end she reveals how she became the “me� she is now. There’s still hatred, violence, racism, and discrimination in the present; but it’s their broken pasts that can now be faced and assimilated, even if it’s 'just' because a loving partner is potentially there for the choosing, and for joy, in the now.
4.5, upped a half-star from my original rating: My stars always reflect my reading experience. If I read this a third time (and I may, one day), I think I’ll be a better reader of it and I could achieve those full 5 stars.
While the subject matter of Jazz is not as difficult as that of —though make no mistake, the darkness is here, underneath, to the side, or overcome (to a certain extent)—and its tone is lighter—the characters, freed from slavery, leaving sharecropping, run out of town with the burning and lynching of others, have more agency than before (any agency is more than none) now that they are in the City—in many ways this work is structurally more challenging than Beloved, with its multiple narrators: an “I� that might be the City, sometimes, or might be the author herself, most times; characters who take their turn telling their stories, expressed in quotations, as if they are talking to someone, but to whom might remain mysterious. A case for the first-person narrator being the writer herself becomes more evident in a beautiful section (my favorite) that describes the narrator’s evolving feelings toward a character named Golden I have been careless and stupid and it infuriates me to discover (again) how unreliable I am and with a lovely passage near the end that states her expectations for Joe and Violet have been thwarted.
Recurring images of birds (parrots and redwings); wells of water that kill and nourish; caves that hide and nurture as a parent is searched for (reminding me of ) make for a rich reading experience. After the first chapter, the beginning of each subsequent chapter riffs on a word/idea/feeling/scene of the paragraph that came right before it, but from the viewpoint of a different character or narrator. I’m sure the riffing has been noted before and described as lyrical, as fitting for the new music of the time and place. But I want to go back to the aforementioned agency due to the time and place.
When Joe tells his story, he enumerates how he “changed into new seven times,� starting from the time he named himself. Violet feels split in two, thinks of how that Violet did the things she can’t comprehend the other Violet doing. Near the end she reveals how she became the “me� she is now. There’s still hatred, violence, racism, and discrimination in the present; but it’s their broken pasts that can now be faced and assimilated, even if it’s 'just' because a loving partner is potentially there for the choosing, and for joy, in the now.
October 10, 2021
It was the music. The dirty, get-on-down music the women sang and the men played and both danced to, close and shameless or apart and wild.
Another dazzling novel from Morrison which follows in her trilogy but which can equally be read as a standalone as the connections are thematic rather than through characters.
The 'now' is the mid-1920s and the place is Harlem, NY - but while chronologically this takes place during the Harlem Renaissance, the book studiously avoids glamour and artistry and instead sets itself amidst ordinary people: a hairdresser, a door to door salesman, their local community, and the clubs and speakeasies where the jazz of the title floats out and over the landscape of the text.
Once again, this speaks to intergenerational traumas centred on the legacies of chattel slavery, of broken families, of orphaned children in search of some rootedness and home, with light touches of the horrors of lynching, race riots, and the pervasive racism that, for example, allowed Black men to serve in WW1 but not to be honoured or respected.
There's a sensuous, hard-hitting story with a violent love triangle that gives the book its structure but what really stands out is Morrison's lyricism and the way her prose duplicates the syncopated rhythms of the music that threads through this tale, with motifs presented and re-occuring and improvisations moving across time as individual voices emerge to tell their story before harmonising back into the main melody.
Polyphonic, beautifully sculptured: this continues the story of African-Americans that began so devastatingly in Beloved.
March 28, 2021
This is my favorite book by Toni Morrison so far as I work my way through all of her published works. The author narrates the Audible version. What a gift to hear her bring her characters to life. Jazz is the story of Joe and Violet. Like most of Morrison’s work, we get the back story of the main characters as she brings to life the hardships and forced migrations of many blacks during the early 20th century. I greatly appreciated these back stories, especially the longing to find one’s identity by finding/connecting with parents that were never known.
It is a simple, yet complex story that starts with a violent and sad end to an affair gone wrong. We get inside the heads and hearts of Joe and Violet, and young Dorcas. There is great insight into the thoughts and motivations of people involved in an affair and its eventual end. There are many tender moments, such as when Joe and Violet meet, but I was especially moved by the ending when we get the perspective of one of Dorcas’s friends. Her presence and actions help Joe and Violet begin to heal leaving the reader with a sense of hope and hardships overcome.
It is a simple, yet complex story that starts with a violent and sad end to an affair gone wrong. We get inside the heads and hearts of Joe and Violet, and young Dorcas. There is great insight into the thoughts and motivations of people involved in an affair and its eventual end. There are many tender moments, such as when Joe and Violet meet, but I was especially moved by the ending when we get the perspective of one of Dorcas’s friends. Her presence and actions help Joe and Violet begin to heal leaving the reader with a sense of hope and hardships overcome.
September 9, 2024
Best first paragraph of any book I've read. I love Morrison's writing here and also felt very much like I am not sure I understood the book. The dialogue, the scenes, all amazing. The plot, lost me a bit. I still really liked reading it and felt on the edge of my seat most of the time.
March 27, 2021
"Maybe she thought she could solve the mystery of love that way. Good luck and let me know."
April 24, 2022
jazz. the 3rd morrison in my plan to knock ‘em all out over the next month or so…significantly weaker than the other two i’ve read, but still... it’s almost a shame that morrison writes about such incendiary and zeitgeisty stuff as you pull back much of the (mostly) nonsensical cultural criticism that surrounds her, her work, and her readers and she’s just a first class storyteller. just a great, great writer. amongst all the tragedy and despair, there’s a joyfulness in the work that goes largely unspoken as people try and work out all the ‘important� stuff.
i usually don’t go for the poetic passages... but check this one from Jazz:
It's nice when grown people whisper to each other under the covers. Their ecstasy is more leaf-sigh than bray and the body is the vehicle, not the point. They reach, grown people, for something beyond, way beyond and way, way down underneath tissue. They are remembering while they whisper the carnival dolls they won and the Baltimore boats they never sailed on. …Breathing and murmuring under covers both of them have washed and hung out on the line, in a bed they chose together and kept together nevermind one leg was propped on a 1916 dictionary, and the mattress, curved like a preacher's palm asking for witnesses in His name's sake, enclosed them each and every night and muffled their whispering, old-time love. They are under the covers because they don't have to look at themselves anymore.
In re-reading the above, two other passages come to mind. the first from martin amis and the second from the greatest poet of the last century (that's right!), philip larkin. If you’re interested...
Cities at night, I feel, contain men who cry in their sleep and then say Nothing. It’s nothing. Just sad dreams. Or something like that� Swing low in your weep ship, with your tear scans and your sob probes, and you would mark them. Women � and they can be wives, lovers, gaunt muses, fat nurses, obsessions, devourers, exes, nemeses � will wake and turn to these men and ask, with female need-to-know, “What is it?� And the men say, “Nothing. No it isn’t anything really. Just sad dreams."
first paragraph from the information.
and:
What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose
It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
And you keep on pissing yourself, and can't remember
Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,
They could alter things back to when they danced all night,
Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?
Or do they fancy there's really been no change,
And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,
Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming
Watching light move? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange:
Why aren't they screaming?
first stanza of the old fools
i usually don’t go for the poetic passages... but check this one from Jazz:
It's nice when grown people whisper to each other under the covers. Their ecstasy is more leaf-sigh than bray and the body is the vehicle, not the point. They reach, grown people, for something beyond, way beyond and way, way down underneath tissue. They are remembering while they whisper the carnival dolls they won and the Baltimore boats they never sailed on. …Breathing and murmuring under covers both of them have washed and hung out on the line, in a bed they chose together and kept together nevermind one leg was propped on a 1916 dictionary, and the mattress, curved like a preacher's palm asking for witnesses in His name's sake, enclosed them each and every night and muffled their whispering, old-time love. They are under the covers because they don't have to look at themselves anymore.
In re-reading the above, two other passages come to mind. the first from martin amis and the second from the greatest poet of the last century (that's right!), philip larkin. If you’re interested...
Cities at night, I feel, contain men who cry in their sleep and then say Nothing. It’s nothing. Just sad dreams. Or something like that� Swing low in your weep ship, with your tear scans and your sob probes, and you would mark them. Women � and they can be wives, lovers, gaunt muses, fat nurses, obsessions, devourers, exes, nemeses � will wake and turn to these men and ask, with female need-to-know, “What is it?� And the men say, “Nothing. No it isn’t anything really. Just sad dreams."
first paragraph from the information.
and:
What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose
It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
And you keep on pissing yourself, and can't remember
Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,
They could alter things back to when they danced all night,
Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?
Or do they fancy there's really been no change,
And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,
Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming
Watching light move? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange:
Why aren't they screaming?
first stanza of the old fools
July 31, 2014
The music happens in the background� while the folks are front and centre, every blemish inside and out on view, though modestly shaded and wrapped in gentlest understanding. Part of that understanding is history, not excavated, but unfurled or traced carefully with one finger, because it is still alive and hurting. Kinship structures the story, which curls around time, helical, branching... it is a sinewy vine, hacked at in places yet blossoming out, covering itself with fresh, lush, resurgent life. A leaf is an organ. One leaf's flourishing nourishes the whole. But fallen sisters and brothers are mourned�
Where did this violence come from? Joe and Violet kill and mutilate a teenage girl� and then Morrison makes us love them. Audre Lorde said "When people share a common oppression, certain kinds of skills and joint defenses are developed. And if you survive you survive because those skills and defenses have worked. When you come into conflict over other existing differences, there is a vulnerability to each other which is desperate and very deep"*. The violence of racism is digested into intraracial violence. The blood-fed and tormented vine - no wonder - bears bitter fruit.
*Interview with Adrienne Rich, in Sister Outsider
One thing that struck me was the contrast between Acton and Joe. The cruel, self-centred young man fits the patriarchal expectations of Dorcas, raised by an Aunt who restricted her to protect against what she saw as a sinful youth culture. Joe, seen through his wife's eyes, is different, special, richly worthy of love, and his own telling inspires deep sympathy and liking. But it's Joe, not Acton, who destroys Dorcas, literally killing her, because it is easy, much too easy, to deal death, much too hard to reject what white supremacist capitalist patriachy teaches: that black women are expendable, that men are entitled to unconditional female loyalty.
Missing mothers and a missing motherland for black people in America are imperfectly substituted by fellow orphan migrants to Harlem, where some kind of safety in numbers and mutual support are found. Trauma remains unarticulated, too painful for conversation, instead flowing into, being answered by the music, which flowers irrepressibly, dark blooms dripping scent and nectar, mild aphrodisiac intoxicants.
Our narrator lives in Harlem too passing on the tales she knows, but sometimes she lets their owners tell them first or again. This is how it felt to me and then this is how I see it. The gatherer, the teller, bears an authority that comes with responsibility; she does it justice by reminding her hearers that there is no single story, only herstories and histories variously nourished and starved and intertwined.
Where did this violence come from? Joe and Violet kill and mutilate a teenage girl� and then Morrison makes us love them. Audre Lorde said "When people share a common oppression, certain kinds of skills and joint defenses are developed. And if you survive you survive because those skills and defenses have worked. When you come into conflict over other existing differences, there is a vulnerability to each other which is desperate and very deep"*. The violence of racism is digested into intraracial violence. The blood-fed and tormented vine - no wonder - bears bitter fruit.
*Interview with Adrienne Rich, in Sister Outsider
One thing that struck me was the contrast between Acton and Joe. The cruel, self-centred young man fits the patriarchal expectations of Dorcas, raised by an Aunt who restricted her to protect against what she saw as a sinful youth culture. Joe, seen through his wife's eyes, is different, special, richly worthy of love, and his own telling inspires deep sympathy and liking. But it's Joe, not Acton, who destroys Dorcas, literally killing her, because it is easy, much too easy, to deal death, much too hard to reject what white supremacist capitalist patriachy teaches: that black women are expendable, that men are entitled to unconditional female loyalty.
Missing mothers and a missing motherland for black people in America are imperfectly substituted by fellow orphan migrants to Harlem, where some kind of safety in numbers and mutual support are found. Trauma remains unarticulated, too painful for conversation, instead flowing into, being answered by the music, which flowers irrepressibly, dark blooms dripping scent and nectar, mild aphrodisiac intoxicants.
Our narrator lives in Harlem too passing on the tales she knows, but sometimes she lets their owners tell them first or again. This is how it felt to me and then this is how I see it. The gatherer, the teller, bears an authority that comes with responsibility; she does it justice by reminding her hearers that there is no single story, only herstories and histories variously nourished and starved and intertwined.
September 6, 2019
3 stars
I just have to admit that I am not really a Toni Morrison fan. I have read a couple of her books and like this one, they just did not make a lot of sense to me. It is not the eclectic conversations in her books, I just feel that her story lines are scattered and I have a terrible time following her. If I think I am following her thoughts, I eventually end up at a dead stop, wondering where things are going or what I just read and the purpose of it.
I gave this book a 3 star rating not because I liked the book, but because she was such an honored and well liked author who has won numerous awards for her writing. Just because I do not care for her writing does not mean that she was not accomplished. Sadly, I just do not connect with her.
I just have to admit that I am not really a Toni Morrison fan. I have read a couple of her books and like this one, they just did not make a lot of sense to me. It is not the eclectic conversations in her books, I just feel that her story lines are scattered and I have a terrible time following her. If I think I am following her thoughts, I eventually end up at a dead stop, wondering where things are going or what I just read and the purpose of it.
I gave this book a 3 star rating not because I liked the book, but because she was such an honored and well liked author who has won numerous awards for her writing. Just because I do not care for her writing does not mean that she was not accomplished. Sadly, I just do not connect with her.
September 6, 2022
WOAH.
I just finished this book, and I want to start from "Sth" all over again.
This is the second book I've read by Toni Morrison, (the first was Song of Solomon), and I hope that I can read every book she has published in my lifetime.
This one took me a while to finish, and that's because I had to be paying close attention. The narrators change, and I admit that I needed to google who the last narrator was lol.
While I at times I had to work hard to grasp the narration, I am so glad this book was written in this manner. To know that people, and life, are complex is to know that there will always be multiple perceptions.
Violet. Violet--Violent---Violet. My absolute favorite character. And that's saying a lot because in the end, after Joe interacted with Felice, I came to really love Joe.
But Violet. I will never forget her. She reminds me a tad bit of Pilate from Song of Solomon.
I think it's because she carries the same message---that craziness is subjective. And, Violet knows, that she is more than the stereotypes that are casted upon her.
She doesn't care what people think of her. And she's honest to the core.
I'll be rereading this, but hopefully in a couple of years, because I need to take time to process the first read.
I just finished this book, and I want to start from "Sth" all over again.
This is the second book I've read by Toni Morrison, (the first was Song of Solomon), and I hope that I can read every book she has published in my lifetime.
This one took me a while to finish, and that's because I had to be paying close attention. The narrators change, and I admit that I needed to google who the last narrator was lol.
While I at times I had to work hard to grasp the narration, I am so glad this book was written in this manner. To know that people, and life, are complex is to know that there will always be multiple perceptions.
Violet. Violet--Violent---Violet. My absolute favorite character. And that's saying a lot because in the end, after Joe interacted with Felice, I came to really love Joe.
But Violet. I will never forget her. She reminds me a tad bit of Pilate from Song of Solomon.
I think it's because she carries the same message---that craziness is subjective. And, Violet knows, that she is more than the stereotypes that are casted upon her.
She doesn't care what people think of her. And she's honest to the core.
I'll be rereading this, but hopefully in a couple of years, because I need to take time to process the first read.
August 25, 2020
Toni Morrison has been one of my favourite authors since I read one of her books (Beloved) for the first time. I simply cannot find any flaw in any of her books, her writing style is so rich and the understanding and portrayal of human nature she depicts in her books is beyond simple fiction. The stories of the characters of this book, described in a borderline stream of consciousness writing style; the way she sublimes the lowest, most violent and disturbing aspects of humanity in a way that is so unapologetic it is almost poetic; the way she creates the realest, most incredible human beings whose lives are so heartbreaking they must be true, makes her one of the most difficult authors to read and to stop reading. Amazing.
June 15, 2020
One thing, one note, I will always carry with me when I stop being so fearful and actually put words on a page: There is story enough in writing about the way people feel, not just what they do. Toni examines and reexamines her characters' motives and moods in a way that feels so true to life. We don't always understand why we do what we do, but looking back on our lives and the lives of the people we have loved may provide some explanation. I want to sit in the words Toni writes and absorb them and hold on to them for the rest of my life.
August 1, 2022
Toni Morrison si lamentava che da bambina era l’unica della sua famiglia a non saper suonare a orecchio, ma poi basta prendere in mano un suo libro per capire che il senso del ritmo lei ce l’aveva con le parole.
January 13, 2023
toni morrison kitaplarında şimdiye dek “sevilen� kadar sevmeye yaklaştığım olmamıştı. ama “caz� beni dötümden bıçakladı 🔪 (haha bu ifadeyi çok kullanasım vardı)
yani 18’inde bir genç kızı öldüren erkek katille de empati yaptırma bize be toni morrison! kendimi kötü hissediyorum joe’yu sevdikçe.
romanın ders niteliğinde bir açılışı var. anlatıcı herkesi her şeyi biliyor ama tanrı anlatıcı değil, kim olduğunu bilmiyoruz. hatta gelecekte olacak bazı şeyleri de söylüyor. sonra müthiş bir son bölümle anlatıcı yazar oluyor ve kendini kaptırıp geleceğe yönelik şeyler söylediğini ama joe’yla violet’in geldikleri duruma şaşakaldığını belirtiyor.
joe 50’lerinde bir adam. violet 50’lerinde bir kadın. ikisi de genç yaşta köle gibi (kölelik kalksa da) çiftliklerde çalışırken tanışıp evleniyor. 30’larında şehre, harlem’e geliyorlar. şehre bayılıyorlar ki romanda bu çok sosyolojik bir durum. köyleri evler yakılmış binlerce öksüz yetim siyah şehre göç edip orada bir yaşam kuruyor.
romanda şehir diye anılan harlem de caz müziği ve blues da ana karakter sayılır. nefis betimlemelerle roman müzikten sokağa sokaktan ağaca ağaçtan dansa savruluyor.
bu evli çiftin tüm dengesi joe’nun 18’indeki beyaz dorcas’a aşık olmasıyla bozuluyor. aşkından! dorcas’� öldüren joe’dan sonra violet de hıncından cenazede kızın cesedini bıçaklıyor. bunları nefis ilk paragrafta öğreniyoruz zaten. yani şiddet dolu bir hikayeyle başlıyoruz.
ama nasıl bir aşk anlatımına dönüşüyor sonra. violet’in joe’ya nasıl bağlandığını geçmişiyle birlikte düşününce� bir de joe’nun dorcas’a duyduğunu ve adamın dinmeyen ağlamasını okudukça iki aşkı da anlamaktan helak oluyoruz. ki yaptıklarını bile anlıyoruz öyle fena.
anlatıcı çok dengesiz. bu üçlünün geçmişine bugününe geleceğine savrulup dururken bir anda golden gray’in hikayesine geçiyor. o yüzden romanı kısa sürede okumakta fayda var. takip etmek zorlaşabiliyor.
ama her şeyin arkasında siyahların çektiği, onlara yapılanlar, hukuksuz adaletsiz işçilikler, borçlanmalar, ölümler ve yangınlar var.
bugünde ise yani romanın geçtiği 1926 yılında bitmiş bir savaş, gelişen bir şehir, beyzbol bile oynayabilen siyahlar, buna sevinen bir halk, içki yasağı, püritenler ve ahlaksızca halkın kasıklarını kavuran caz müziği var. ve elbette morrison’ın illa bir şekilde var etmenin yolunu bulduğu kızkardeşlik de.
çok sevdim. nihal yeğinobalı, morrison’ın ritimli dilini bence ustalıkla yakalamış.
yani 18’inde bir genç kızı öldüren erkek katille de empati yaptırma bize be toni morrison! kendimi kötü hissediyorum joe’yu sevdikçe.
romanın ders niteliğinde bir açılışı var. anlatıcı herkesi her şeyi biliyor ama tanrı anlatıcı değil, kim olduğunu bilmiyoruz. hatta gelecekte olacak bazı şeyleri de söylüyor. sonra müthiş bir son bölümle anlatıcı yazar oluyor ve kendini kaptırıp geleceğe yönelik şeyler söylediğini ama joe’yla violet’in geldikleri duruma şaşakaldığını belirtiyor.
joe 50’lerinde bir adam. violet 50’lerinde bir kadın. ikisi de genç yaşta köle gibi (kölelik kalksa da) çiftliklerde çalışırken tanışıp evleniyor. 30’larında şehre, harlem’e geliyorlar. şehre bayılıyorlar ki romanda bu çok sosyolojik bir durum. köyleri evler yakılmış binlerce öksüz yetim siyah şehre göç edip orada bir yaşam kuruyor.
romanda şehir diye anılan harlem de caz müziği ve blues da ana karakter sayılır. nefis betimlemelerle roman müzikten sokağa sokaktan ağaca ağaçtan dansa savruluyor.
bu evli çiftin tüm dengesi joe’nun 18’indeki beyaz dorcas’a aşık olmasıyla bozuluyor. aşkından! dorcas’� öldüren joe’dan sonra violet de hıncından cenazede kızın cesedini bıçaklıyor. bunları nefis ilk paragrafta öğreniyoruz zaten. yani şiddet dolu bir hikayeyle başlıyoruz.
ama nasıl bir aşk anlatımına dönüşüyor sonra. violet’in joe’ya nasıl bağlandığını geçmişiyle birlikte düşününce� bir de joe’nun dorcas’a duyduğunu ve adamın dinmeyen ağlamasını okudukça iki aşkı da anlamaktan helak oluyoruz. ki yaptıklarını bile anlıyoruz öyle fena.
anlatıcı çok dengesiz. bu üçlünün geçmişine bugününe geleceğine savrulup dururken bir anda golden gray’in hikayesine geçiyor. o yüzden romanı kısa sürede okumakta fayda var. takip etmek zorlaşabiliyor.
ama her şeyin arkasında siyahların çektiği, onlara yapılanlar, hukuksuz adaletsiz işçilikler, borçlanmalar, ölümler ve yangınlar var.
bugünde ise yani romanın geçtiği 1926 yılında bitmiş bir savaş, gelişen bir şehir, beyzbol bile oynayabilen siyahlar, buna sevinen bir halk, içki yasağı, püritenler ve ahlaksızca halkın kasıklarını kavuran caz müziği var. ve elbette morrison’ın illa bir şekilde var etmenin yolunu bulduğu kızkardeşlik de.
çok sevdim. nihal yeğinobalı, morrison’ın ritimli dilini bence ustalıkla yakalamış.
April 4, 2019
Incredible! Lyrical and sublime! Ms. Morrison portrays the post slavery period in America (just after the Civil War) and into the 20th century as well as any writer I have read who has had the courage to deal with this period, a dark period in American history where people of color might have been free, but not really. Her characters are unforgettable and so real and her writing transcends the time and place of her writing and its brilliance is everlasting. AMAZING!!
July 29, 2023
It took five attempts over the past few years for me to get into this book. And I finally completed it. And I love it. It’s been a journey.
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March 1, 2025don't mind me reading this series out of order!! it's just due in a few days lol
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