**A Scandalous Trio**

Jazz music, though not the immediate subject matter of this exceptional novel, significantly influences its structure and atmosphere. The narrator vividly describes a party with "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, or perhaps "a scandalising threesome", if not exactly a menage a trois. They are introduced in the first paragraph, setting the essence of the novel's plot. In each subsequent chapter, Toni Morrison delves into the past of each character and their shared history, as if each chapter is a solo allowing 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, and this may be the main connotation in the title. The novel seems primarily focused on sex, lust, desire, touch, seduction, passion, romance, loneliness, longing, craving, and love. Set in Harlem in 1926, earlier in 1906, Joe and Violet, descendants of black slaves, left rural Vesper County, Virginia, and moved to New York, attracted by the music, romance, and better-paying job opportunities. They were "crazy about this City" that was "seeping music" and "begged and challenged each and every day."

**Private Cracks**

The narrator describes Violet as having "private cracks." She suffers from a fragmented self, sometimes stumbling into these cracks, as when she stepped back instead of forward and folded her legs to sit in the street. Joe and Violet disagree over having children, and now they may be beyond the age when it's possible or convenient. Violet stares at children in the street and cuddles a toy doll each night, yet she and Joe aren't obviously estranged. She explains her plight simply: "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**

This brings us back to the first paragraph on the first page, which is typical of the novel's language - casual, almost conversational, yet dense with information and detail, and both imaginative and lyrical. At the end of the novel, the narrator reveals her views on the quest for love, emphasizing reciprocity. This focus on reciprocity seems to be a natural extension of the question of identity for all people, not just black Americans, perhaps accounting for the novel's success with white readers. Paradoxically, this realisation occurs at the level of the narrator and the reader, not from the relationship between the three protagonists. Maybe literature, art, and music are substitutes for love when 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."

When I get obsessed with a girl, it's like a wildfire burning inside me.

Every thought seems to revolve around her. Her smile haunts my dreams, and her voice lingers in my mind.

I find myself constantly looking for opportunities to be near her, to talk to her, to know more about her.

I analyze every word she says, every gesture she makes, trying to decipher the hidden meanings.

I become hyper-aware of her presence, and my heart races whenever she is around.

This obsession can consume me, making it difficult to focus on other aspects of my life.

But at the same time, it also gives me a sense of purpose and excitement.

I am willing to do whatever it takes to win her over, to make her mine.

However, I also know that this obsession needs to be balanced. I can't let it control my life completely.

I have to find a way to manage my feelings and pursue a healthy relationship with her.

I'd always yearned for Jazz to be the very first Toni Morrison work that I delved into, and I'm overjoyed that I've finally had the opportunity. The writing within this book is truly astonishing. Morrison shows an unwavering dedication to the jazz-like essence of the language. Its arrhythmic, jagged patterns converge to form a messy yet glorious symphony. Moreover, the text has *become* jazz itself, as fearless and unpredictable as the music, meandering wherever it pleases, traversing people's pasts and their inevitable tragic destinies.

The story is predominantly set in 1926, during the zenith of the Jazz age, an era that we've mainly come to know through the mainstream accounts of the Fitzgeralds and their contemporaries. Morrison presents an alternative history, a unique period when Black people had just emerged from slavery, leaving the rural South in pursuit of the freedoms of city life. The characters are distinct in their burdens and desires, serving as illustrations of Black life in a time and place largely defined by music that, in turn, symbolizes freedom, improvisation, and passion. The individuals in Jazz have been both abandoned and emancipated, nurturing an "inside nothing" in a City that is alternately comforting and cruel. Certain storylines focus on exploring how the present attempts to erase the past but can never succeed completely, and Morrison accomplishes this with a dexterity essential for this nebulous jazz number. Sensual, defiant, and wildly inventive, Jazz and Toni Morrison were truly ahead of their time.

Read with Marj and Ynna!

"The plot as a melody of the piece" Toni Morrison

In Jazz, it is precisely so: the plot of the novel is like a melody and it is all there in the first few lines, completely, at the beginning. After that, there are no complicated constructions or plot twists. The plot-melody is there, and in the subsequent chapters, the story is told from different perspectives, by various voices. It enriches with new tones, new sonic and emotional shadings, echoes that are different, like the phrases of musicians chasing each other in a jam session...

Sst, I know that woman. She lived with a bunch of birds on Lenox Avenue. I also know her husband. He lost his mind over an eighteen-year-old: one of those loves that are all guts, scary, that made him sad and happy to the point of shooting her so that that emotion would last forever. When the woman, Violet, went to the funeral to see the girl and smear the lifeless face, she was pushed to the ground and thrown out of the church. She then started running, in the middle of all that snow, and when she got home, she opened the cages, threw open the windows and let the birds free to die of cold or fly away, including the parrot that said "I love you".
In the snow swept by the wind, no footprints were left, so for a while no one knew exactly where she lived on Lenox Avenue.
But, like me, they knew who she was, who she had to be, because they knew that the husband, Joe Trace, was the one who had shot the girl.

This is a novel with an impressive musicality.
It is because of the rhythm of the writing, because of the Harlem jazz
that is not only everywhere, on the street corners, in the houses, in the places, but is the energy, the passion, the sensuality, the unpredictability that runs through the story
and because the characters (from Violet/Violent, to Joe, to Dorcas, all the way to the secondary ones) are above all voices, more than bodies, with very recognizable timbres.

4 stars!

Jazz is the second part of Toni Morrison's Beloved Trilogy. I really liked Beloved or its German translation Menschenkind at that time, although it wasn't easy to read. Unfortunately, I didn't really get into Jazz.

Toni Morrison is undoubtedly a magnificent author, and one can see from this book that she can write. However, for my taste, there were too many characters, too many narrative perspectives, and also too many time jumps. This is indeed often the case in her other books as well. But this time, it was very difficult for me to find the red thread and follow the plot. As a result, I found the reading rather tiring.

It seems that I have a talent with Toni Morrison for alternately reading books of hers that I love above all else with those that I don't really warm to. Therefore, I'm already looking forward to my next reading, because according to this rule, it should appeal to me again.

Here we encounter a rather convoluted love triangle. It involves Joe and his wife, Violet, who is often dubbed Violent because of certain actions of hers. Then there is Joe's young lover, Dorcas. The narrative seems to have more of a connection to jazz than to the actual story. It flows in a musical way, yet at times it is discordant, much like jazz/blues music. The story jumps from 1920s Harlem to the antebellum South, packing an extraordinary amount of history into this relatively small book.

I found myself feeling quite disconnected from the story. I never had the sense that I was given the opportunity to truly get to know or appreciate any of the characters or their experiences. The descriptions that Morrison writes are indeed quite spectacular. However, they are not quite sufficient to make me extremely eager about the book as a whole. I recall having the same feeling about Beloved. Although in that one, I found myself more interested in what was taking place, even if I thought that most of what happened was not to my liking. Neither of these books impressed me even remotely as much as Song of Solomon or The Bluest Eye. I could have easily skipped this one entirely if I had known better.

  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."

Toni Morrison commences Jazz with this remarkable first paragraph that encapsulates a significant portion of the story. This short novel, despite its concise length, unfolds on an extremely broad canvas. It delves into the complex lives of Violet and Joe Trace and their deteriorating marriage. It also explores the story of the puritanical Alice Manfred and her flighty niece Dorcas, who falls for Joe. Additionally, it tells the tale of Golden Gray, the mulatto born of a black father and a white mother, and the mysterious Wild Woman, Joe Trace's mother, who is always present in the woods. However, above all, it is a vivid portrayal of Harlem in the 1920s and its sinful music: jazz.



Morrison employs a fragmented storytelling style, with the narrative shifting abruptly between people, places, and events, much like jump cuts in a film. Linearity is deliberately abandoned, and the author intentionally misleads the reader in many instances. In the middle of the novel, when we are deeply engrossed in the story of Violet, Joe, Dorcas, and Alice, the narrative suddenly switches to the story of Golden Gray's search for his father, who initially seems to have only a tenuous connection to the overall tale. The author thoroughly confounds us before skillfully weaving the two threads together.



Here, Toni Morrison, while serving as the omnipresent narrator, confesses to not having complete control over her characters. She states,

  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 seems to be writing itself, using the hapless author as a medium. To understand how this is possible, one must understand the City and its unique music, which compelled even reluctant individuals to dance to its jagged and kaleidoscopic melody.



Jazz music emerged from the black people's inherent need to express themselves, even in the face of physical and spiritual bondage. Evolving from Africa's primitive music traditions, it was a fusion of African and European elements. It is non-linear and fragmented, a blend of various notes and beats. It may not be considered classical, and many regarded it as sinful, but one thing is undeniable - it has the power to make you dance.



Come, let us dance with Toni Morrison. The night is still young, and the allure of her words and the rhythm of jazz await us.

Jazz. The third 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, 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. Morrison's writing in Jazz has its own charm and beauty. The description of the grown people whispering under the covers is so vivid and intimate. It makes you feel as if you are right there with them, sharing their moment of tenderness. The comparison of their ecstasy to a leaf-sigh rather than a bray is a unique and interesting way of expressing their emotions. It shows that their love is not loud and ostentatious, but rather quiet and profound. The mention of the carnival dolls and the Baltimore boats adds a touch of nostalgia and longing to the passage. It makes you wonder what dreams and desires these people have had in their lives and how they have changed over time.

The passages from Martin Amis and Philip Larkin also add an interesting dimension to the discussion. Amis' description of the men crying in their sleep and the women's need to know what is wrong is a common and relatable scenario. It shows the different ways in which men and women deal with their emotions. Larkin's poem, on the other hand, is a poignant and thought-provoking look at old age and the loss of youth. It makes you wonder what it feels like to be old and to look back on your life with regret and longing. Overall, these passages all offer different perspectives on love, loss, and the human condition.

**(Book 155 from 1001 books) - Jazz, Toni Morrison**

Jazz is a captivating 1992 historical novel penned by the renowned Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning American author, Toni Morrison.

The story predominantly unfolds in Harlem during the vibrant 1920s. However, as the author delves deep into the pasts of the diverse characters, the narrative stretches back to the mid-19th-century American South. This novel forms the second installment of Morrison's Dantesque trilogy that explores African-American history, commencing with Beloved in 1987 and concluding with Paradise in 1997.

The novel has been published with various titles in Iran. It has a unique writing style that is both mysterious and symbolic. Set in the African-American community in the 1920s and 1930s, it tells the story of a generation that, after putting aside the war and grappling with its aftermath, is in search of a peaceful space to live. They strive to achieve a utopian city like "City." Morrison, in this work, has beautifully crafted the hopes, conflicts, sleepless nights, and concerns of this generation with concise language. By presenting the cultures, customs, and traditions of the African-American community, she has attracted readers with her own words. The translator of the book remarks that the language in the novel "Jazz" is everything. The characters in the novel are crafted using this language, and the very words create symbolic and yet ordinary characters. The novel, by creating miniature scenes of this generation, moves towards an exploration of human life in the contemporary era and reveals his efforts for self-liberation.

The dates of dissemination are 19/09/1399 Hijri Shamsi and 23/08/1400 Hijri Shamsi.

If I was completely taken by Beloved, I am perhaps more in love with Toni Morrison's storytelling with Jazz.

Set in the Jazz Age of 1920s America, the narrative of this book resounds with a certain musical cadence, an unmistakable lyricism that brings alive the inner lives of its characters. The City, too, is a character in itself. Incredibly seductive, it breathes, ebbs and flows alongside human life. Yet, the chiming of its liberation rings somewhat hollow for the black people, who are still bound by the metaphorical shackles of racial segregation.

The story begins with a common generalising trope: A middle-aged Black man, Joe Trace, shoots an eighteen-year-old girl (Dorcas) dead out of jealousy. His wife, Violet, who displays signs of depression and distress, tries to mutilate the body at the funeral. A white girl's funeral, no less.

Indeed, the idea of the violent black man is a rather persistent racial stereotype. What Morrison does in Jazz is to explore that trope, but with human compassion that doesn't essentialize. Similarly, Violet's condition as a woman disgraced twice over is explored. But unlike in Beloved, Morrison bridged the gap between the races: Alice Manfried, the dead girl's repressive aunt, strikes up an unusual relationship with Violet. Dorcas and Felice defy the norms of friendship in a society divided by Jim Crow, with Felice being Black. Even Violet and Dorcas are united by the void of missing mothers. In Joe's case, Morrison takes another kind of missing mother - the figure of the wild black woman.

But Jazz does not forget. Through jagged timelines, through the link of the present to the past, it tells the story of Golden Grey, a light-skinned mulatto born to a white mother and in hatred of his Black father. The dilemma of multiracial heritage in a divided, hierarchical society is explored here.

Morrison takes the themes of racial division and stereotyping, of friendship and fidelity, of repression and dignity, of the city and the country, of sin and seduction, and sets them to music. She makes one understand how these are as integral to the age as the musical forms it is known for, as definitive.

Jazz ends, too, with harmony: in the end, Felice (a name which means 'happy') bringing together the themes of motherhood, of racialized self-perceptions, and of the central conflict of Dorcas' death in a memorable crescendo. She also brings together the Traces, and birds sing in their home again.

Morrison's adeptness with words and stories is unequivocal and unparalleled, and her ability to provide the reader with a nuanced understanding of black lives renders her an important writer. Jazz is not just a work in reinforcement of that, but also a remarkably beautiful one.

“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 of "Jazz" starts with Violet, a 50-something woman, mutilating the corpse of Dorcas, the teenager who was her husband Joe Trace's former lover and murder victim. From this intense scene at the funeral, we are drawn into a highly emotional story that seems like an improv, with the story lines interacting not only with the city's surroundings but also with history and personal tales.

To me, the city backdrop and how Morrison weaves it into her story is the most captivating part of the book. Especially when the city is contrasted with the rural areas where the main characters grew up. The city has its own unique energy, and I felt it held great hope and promise for those who had endured slavery and life in the countryside. Moving to the city and experiencing a whole new lifestyle was a momentous turning point in their lives. I appreciate how Morrison shows that a change in setting 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 with the character of Joe Trace. Male violence is always hard to read about, and it's even more difficult when you know the perpetrator doesn't receive the appropriate punishment. However, as I've seen time and again with Morrison (and this is one of the things I admire most about her), she is able to present the facts in a non-judgmental way, and somehow she allows us to feel a certain degree of compassion.

Apart from Dorcas, the murdered teenager, the character I felt most for in this story is Violet. This is a woman who was clearly depressed and searching for something in life. At the age of 56, she said, “I want some fat in this life.” She experienced childhood tragedy, worked hard, was misunderstood, betrayed by her husband, and became the subject of neighborhood gossip.

“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 extremely beautiful read. Toni Morrison's writing style is truly captivating.

Can a musical genre define a narrative style? Yes, it happens with Toni Morrison.

The driving force of the rhythm, sudden changes of perspective, virtuosity, and diverse narrators who blend like solo voices in an improvised and moving jam session.

Harlem, 1926. A fifty-year-old black salesman kills his eighteen-year-old lover. At the funeral, the man's wife tries to disfigure the corpse.

The plot is exhausted in the incredible incipit, yet it develops to embrace a more complete vision of America before the Great Depression.

There is especially the City, with its odors, colors, and sensations. New York is three-dimensional, and the pages dedicated to it exude love and passion.

The recurring theme is that of impulses. Whether they then find an outlet in a troubled love or in an unrestrainable violence is secondary. The characters in Jazz live life from the gut and rarely think about the consequences of their actions, which are often definitive and irreversible.

The structure of the novel is highly researched, with continuous references to African American history, yet without losing credibility and maintaining a freshness in the tones that is difficult to find elsewhere.