Jazz Paperback – June 8, 2004

This is my second time reading this book, with several years between, and I like it more as I’ve aged. While this book is short, it’s better to pace yourself as you read. I encourage the paperback because the pages are thick and that adds to the experience, causing you to take your time turning the page.Morrison’s prose is poetic, and she writes the way that jazz feels. This book alternates points of view as if it is one long stream of consciousness and travels between time just as quickly. Many passages I had to read over again as I did not grasp it the first time. There’s much to be said about love, grief, and generational trauma as well.Morrison has a talent for weaving together the stories and lives of her characters— in some ways I felt I was reading several short stories, and in others I was reading one long poem.

After having read this novel I can't believe all the negative reviews, most people claiming that the novel was too hard or difficult to follow. I've read 4 of Morrison's books (The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Sula and Beloved) and I'll have to say that enjoyed this one amensely and I pretty much read over a span of three days. It's not a difficult read, nor is it difficult to follow if you've read any of her before or read Hemmingway, Faulkner or Kerouac for that matter. On a second reading of any of Morrison's novels, you always come away with something new, as with any quality piece of literature. So I really don't buy into this idea that Morrison's novels, this one in particular are difficult to read.This being said, I found this novel to be a great pleasure, a story that's simple enough about a middle-aged married black couple The Traces in "the City" during 1920's the husband Joe Trace has a fling with a young girl named Dorcas Manfred whom he later kills in the middle of party though the girl's Aunt/Guardian doesn't press charges and the wife Violet "Violent" Trace tries to disfigure the dead girl in the casket at her funeral. That's basically it without giving away the novel. There is an almost sensual use of language here that tells the stories behind the story that is common in Morrison's novels that gives Jazz that particular kind of flavor that distinguishes it from Morrison's other works and makes this novel more than a pleasure to read. I highly recommend it!

An entertaining read. The book chronicles the lives of Joe Trace, his wife Violet, and the possibility of salvaging their marriage, in the aftermath of the murder of his mistress. It examines the themes of love, infidelity, passion, violence, community, and racial identity in post slavery America. The novel also speaks to the exodus of black folks from the south, as they made their way up north to Harlem in the early 1900s, in search of a better way of life. It looks at how they interact, survive and thrive, in spite of their circumstances.Toni Morrison's, skillful prose gives the novel a cultural richness and vitality that resonates with the reader. Her writing style allows the novel to have the same flow, cadence and rhythm of jazz music. This is also appropriate, since the plot is largely centered on Harlem, in a era where jazz music was becoming increasingly popular, and formed the backdrop against which the people lived their lives.Overall this is a good novel, but you may find some of the author's other works a bit more compelling, such as The Bluest Eye, A Mercy, Sula and Beloved.

According to the Wiki, Jazz, by Toni Morrison, is a tale of purgatory and jazz. I say it is a tale of love that moves to a jazz beat. Listen to Morrison describe a world in which love makes itself known to be a necessary thing:"It is terrible when there is absolutely nothing to do or worth doing except to lie down and hope when you are naked she won’t laugh at you. Or that he, holding your breasts, won’t wish they were some other way. Terrible but worth the risk, because there is no other thing to do, although, being seventeen, you do it. Study, work, memorize. Bite into food and the reputations of your friends. Laugh at the things that are right side up and those that are upside-down—it doesn’t matter because you are not doing the thing worth doing which is lying down somewhere in a dimly lit place enclosed in arms, and supported by the core of the world."There is a murder and a touch of revenge, an abandoned child, a feral mother, and two women who find a reluctant reconciliation. And in the language is the thrum of bare feet in the cotton fields and the snaky invitation of a saxophone Harlem night.The narrator’s voice is that of an anonymous observer, an interested spectator, someone who watches from a window or the lamp post on the corner, speculating on her neighbors, and writing down the history she imagines for them.But in the end, she confesses:"I believed I saw everything important they did, and based on what I saw I could imagine what I didn’t; how exotic they were, how driven. Like dangerous children. That’s what I wanted to believe. It never occurred to me that they were thinking other thoughts, feeling other feelings, putting their lives together in ways I never dreamed of."This is what a novelist does, and what a novelist (and a reader) must always realize. We never know the whole story, even of characters we think we make up. Who knows what else they’re thinking.My reading of Jazz is that every character, no matter how lonely, is completely in love, in one way or another. And love is what redeems them. Of course.

Toni Morrison does it again…transcending color lines and bringing a story so rich, textured and layered. Love is the root of the story and the characters tell a compelling tale of love, generational pain and forgiveness. Much like her other works, she delves into the historical context of Black experience and connects the ancestral memory with the characters’ current experiences and patterns in relationships and friendships. Definitely a must read!!