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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!!
3 starsI 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 bec...
I liked this more the first time I read it. Though the actual writing is pretty faultless, as is often the case with any of Mother Toni’s novels, for me there is an issue of too much style, too much substance. I almost wish the novel was double its size; the themes would then have more room to develop and connect, which they rather tenuously do in the novel as written. I do love the very free-form, improvisatory style, the total lack of traditional narrative sequence, but the dramatic engine of
A Scandalous TrioJazz 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 exact...
Reread4.5, 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 Beloved—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 t...
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
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 Beloved 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 arti
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 i
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...
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 follow...
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 largel...
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 The Bluest Eye, but less labyrin...
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 bi
(Book 155 from 1001 books) - Jazz, Toni MorrisonJazz 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...
“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, JazzWynston Marsalis said, “Ja
"Maybe she thought she could solve the mystery of love that way. Good luck and let me know."
“… it did not make her feel generous, this juke joint barrel hooch, tonk house music. It made her hold her hand in the pocket of her apron to keep from smashing it through the glass pane to snatch the world in her fist and squeeze the life out of it for doing what it did and did and did to her and everybody else she knew or knew about.”I wasn’t able to do this, but I think Jazz would be best read in one sitting. It doesn’t read like a novel. It’s not so much a story as it is a song--an evocation...
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 i...
One of my favorite books of all time!I was lucky enough to study this book during 6th form college with a good teacher. Instead of butchering its beauty she illuminated it; leading us through the more complex prose (their beauty all more appreciated due to a deeper level of understanding) and highlighting some of the more obscure elements that might have gone unnoticed (or perhaps not understood).At 16, though not niave, I was perhaps unaware of the many elements and angles of understanding rela...
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 EyeSulaSong Of SolomonTar BabyBelovedJazzParadise