Jazz

Rating:
Summary: Kinda Blue
Review: Only over the last few years have I attained the level of security where I can freely admit certain authors, Toni Morrison and James Joyce are two that immediately leap to mind, intimidate me. Some of Joyce's work seems to be inside jokes, as though he was curious to flush out brave souls with the self-assuredness to declare his prose undecipherable. Ms. Morrison's books I approach with equal proportions of dread and anticipation. If I fail to understand the first time through I always feel like the fault lies with me, my inexcusable dearth of perception. JAZZ is no exception.

It is as enigmatic a novel as I have ever encountered, resolute in challenge while eerily familiar where the author incorporates her signature seamless transitions between eras, past, present, future; or she infuses surrealistic imagery, unsettlingly alien by nature of a conclusion that is subject to divergent interpretations based on the reader's philosophical bent. The prose is probably Morrison's least ethereal, yet I would be reluctant to suggest this book to anyone unacquainted with her body of work. Yes, with the rhythmic progression, lyrical tonality, and soloist interludes, it has all of the pacing and sensuality of a jazz composition, I just cannot decide if it is improv or fusion. For over half of the text, I was carried forward as though I was sitting in a mid-sized venue listening to Weather Report turn up the heat with a lively rendition of 'Birdland,' when Zawinul notices Coltrane in the audience and calls him up to sit in. The setting became an intimate lambent lighted smoke filled room as John dominates the stage with a visceral solo of 'My Favorite Things,' a great tune without question but out of place at this time and location.

The star of the story is the human condition in all of its' glory and pain. Morrison explores all of the many factors that collide and congeal to become the persona(s). Through her characters she speaks of love, friendship and family; she expresses views of race and culture; she illustrates the many facets of expectation, disappointment, and resignation. We are offered a trenchant view of the vagaries of economic determinism and socio-political influence as they pertain to the choices people are so often obligated to follow. Set in Harlem in the mid-twenties, Joe and Violet Trace are the primary corporeal characters, a married couple that by virtue of circumstance have imperceptibly lapsed into patterns that compel each of them to separate existence. A mysterious unnamed, unseen omnipresence serves as narrator, unveiling a tale that begins shortly after Joe murders his teenaged paramour; and Violet, perpetually lost in combat with self-imposed demons, in a fit of rage (and retribution) has attempted to mutilate the corpse. Over the course of the narrative, each major character is viewed from a wealth of perspectives including their own, including the implementation of retro-cognition. The stylization results in the introduction of several tangential characterizations, a few of which seem only to have been included to facilitate the expression of a specific idea or thought, and they tend to obfuscate the story's flow.

Ms. Morrison writes with undeniable beauty typified by her word choice and phrasing. Those attributes alone justify the effort to understand the subtleties of her novels. The greatest weakness I found in this offering was she attempted to cover too many issues beyond the core storyline. The book is an intricate tale encumbered by extraneous diversions. As might be expected with any musical form, JAZZ is not for everyone.

Rating:
Summary: Spanning the Transition from Slavery to the Freedom of Jazz
Review: For many African-Americans, the period from 1860 through 1930 was a particularly challenging one. The formal slavery of the South transitioned into a vulnerable rural economic existence, dependent on the weather and the price of crops. The promise of the city lured many to leave their homes, and adopt city life-styles that put new social pressures on them and their relationships. Jazz tells this story through the microcosm of one marriage, that of Joe and Violet Trace.

Unlike many books about marriage, this one is a love story. Although it bears no relationship to any romance novel you have ever read, it reveals the way that the need for love develops from within each of us and allows us to grasp its potential when we respond to the yearnings of those we care about.

Music was important in the lives of many people during those years. Churches and music halls vied for the attention of most people in the cities. Jazz was a new influence, bursting on the scene with a combination of extreme freedom and mutual respect for the other players. In this book, jazz is represented both as a symbol of freedom and as a source of base impulses that can lead people astray. Ms. Morrison also pays homage to jazz by building her narrative around the individual stories of those involved taken in solitary order, much like the solos in a jazz piece. The narratives all weave together, but you have to hear the whole piece to understand how. Be patient with what seem like digressions. They are really transitions into new perspectives, like when a horn does a riff before returning to the theme.

You also get the metaphor of jazz used in the relationship of the two Traces. They were originally in rhythm with each other, then fell out of rhythm, and then regained their ability to improvise together. It's very nicely done!

To me, the best part of the book was that Ms. Morrison does not permit her characters to fall back on misfortune, fate, and heredity as excuses for misbehavior. Clearly, those factors affect us, but we all have the potential to rise above them. We need only open our eyes and start responding to those closest to us. Then, we can build a better life together.

The family background of the two Traces is a rich tapestry as well of the social history of African-Americans during this period. Ms. Morrison's imagination is quite remarkable in the variety and vividness of these characters!

For those who are interested in understanding more about the roots of the Jazz Age, this book will also be very appealing.

After you have finished thinking about the lessons of Jazz, you should consider where you display the good characteristics of a jazz player . . . and where you do not.

Feel the rhythm around you!

Rating:
Summary: Complex Composition
Review: Jazz is another great work by Toni Morrison. I can only say this because I am somewhat 'used to' reading Morrison's writing style. Not that there is a style, per se. And not that one could ever *really* get 'used to' reading Morrison. This fantastic work is like a jazz composition in and of itself: the narrator is the "band leader;" the characters (when allowed to speak for themselves or when they think on something from their past) are the individual "musicians" called on from time to time to improvise.

Joe and Violet Trace suffer through a great thorn in the side of their marriage. Joe cheats with and then kills a teenage girl. Violet slashes at the corpse of that teenager at her funeral. No character in this book seems to have the benefit of any maternal (or paternal) guidance, yet each absent parent is tangled with the other parents in strange ways.

Ultimately, the characters reconcile their differences and are able to function as a "family" during Harlem Renaissance in NYC.

This book is a must read for those who enjoy fiction and have the desire to read in order to really comprehend.

Rating:
Summary: Jazz...Jazzy?
Review: I wouldn't say this book was Jazzy. It was a great book, yes, but I'm used to the likes of Stephen King, who can make me stay up until I can't hold my eyes open anymore, just because I can't put the book down. This book WAS good, don't get me wrong, and it certainly made the impression upon me that bonds between a woman and her friend are almost unbreakable, but I almost had to force myself to keep reading. It's an easy read, but the pace is slow. So, good job, Toni, but it's not a King.

Rating:
Summary: Another satisying read
Review: Toni Morrison is one of the greatest living authors in the United States today. "Jazz" holds up to my expectations. This is a book that explores the 1920's New York scene, as well as the great migration North. Trying to encapsulate everything in this review would be too hard. On the surface, this story would seem to be one of a love triangle, and the tragic ending. However, Morrison goes much deeper, and echoes Forster with the credo "only connect". This is a story of connection, of sex, and list, and emotions veering wildly out of control. The connection comes from making sense of tragedy, as well as the reader connecting with the characters. It's so hard to dislike those characters you have made moral judgements on, only to find their weaknesses and their humanity outweighs their actions. This is a beautiful novel, and only furthers Morrison's greatness. I will never listen to Jazz music the same way again (and it's a good thing. I also need to read this book again, as one reading is just not sufficient enough to be able to take it all in.

Rating:
Summary: warning flags up
Review: One of the most lamentable developments in the Arts over the past hundred years has been the replacement of structure and universality by lyricism and individualism. Artists and authors used to be able to assume that they and their audience shared a Culture which partook of a definite system of values and beliefs. When we read Shakespeare or look at a painting by Rembrandt or listen to music by Bach, we can feel that we share in the artists vision and we can readily comprehend the fundamental messages that underlie their works. This does not rob them of their depth or their rich textures--merely think of all the reams of paper that have been consumed in dissecting the character of Hamlet--but it does mean that they are accessible to the general public by reference to our common heritage.

Modernity has replaced such universal art with the subjective, the self-indulgent and the abstruse. The themes and messages of art are now unique to the artist/author and the audience is expected to study the individual creator in order to try to understand their works. And since it is no longer important to these artists to convey their meanings, technical proficiency, narrative structure and clarity have given way to idiosyncrasy and abstraction. Of course, the best illustrations of this revolution came early on in the process; after the intelligentsia accepted James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake (see Orrin's review), Jackson Pollack's paint splatters and musical innovations like dissonance and atonality as legitimate advances in the arts, it pretty much opened the doors to anything. Once you abandon objective standards for determining value, which the critics largely have done, you lose the capacity to differentiate good art from bad art. You are left with the oddly bifurcated culture that we see now, where the public shuns the very product that the elites run up the flagpole. Joyce may be considered the greatest author of the 20th Century, but nobody has ever read either Ulysses (see Orrin's review) or Finnegan's Wake from cover to cover. There's not a living room in America with a Pollack on the wall and the only Picasso is his Don Quixote, a fairly conventional representational piece which unlike his most critically acclaimed work refers to one of the world's enduring literary masterpieces. And Classical music has innovated to the point of extinction. It's time for someone to step in and tell the avant garde that no one followed them and the experiment, having failed, is over.

All of which brings us to Jazz by Toni Morrison. I didn't hate this book, the way I did Beloved (see Orrin's review). The central event of the story is once again an incomprehensible murder--this time a middle aged man kills his young lover in order to preserve the feelings their affair has produced. His wife, upon learning of the liaison, mutilates the corpse; but the two inexplicably resume their married life. So okay, it's a tad melodramatic and unlikely, but great fiction has been built on such shaky foundations before. Morrison however seems uninterested in mining any psychological depths or spinning out any conclusions from her basic set up. Instead the book is sort of a set of bluesy linguistic riffs on Renaissance Harlem, ping ponging backwards and forwards in time, and it does contain some beautiful passages of prose; but to what end? We never really connect with or care about any of the characters. We know about the crimes from the word go, so there's no dramatic tension. Do the periodic phrases of lambent, tumescent prosody really suffice to make the book worthwhile? I think not. The beauty of language has fairly little to do with the basic value of a work of fiction. The Sears Catalogue might sound pretty to some people if read aloud in French, but that doesn't make it great literature.

Here's a little clue for you--when the professional reviewers praise the language but pan the story and the regular readers (at sites like Amazon) say they loved it even though they didn't understand it, it's safe to assume that you've got an author who's skating on reputation and warning flags should go up in your head. Morrison's Nobel Prize is probably unwarranted by any measure, but it certainly receives no validation from this book.

GRADE: D

Rating:
Summary: Care to be confused?
Review: I recently read Jazz as part of an English assignment. While the book is good, it's often easy to get lost. My suggestion is that you read its preceding book in this trilogy, Beloved, before you read Jazz. The characters in the book are well-developed and have interesting, unique personalities. If you like stories set in the big city this book describes it in detail, as well as the open countryside. The only downfall of this book, in my opinion, is that Morrison likes to float through time landing irregularly, so it's sometimes hard to know where you are, and with whom.

Rating:
Summary: Uhhh, well . . . .yea!
Review: Once again I'm left speechless. I know that Jazz was an enjoyable read, I just can't seem to find the words to articulate the experience. At times the novel seemed to speak to all the human senses and at times I couldn't make sense of the novel at all. But I finished it. And I know that I have been affirmed, enlightened and enriched by it. Like all of Morrison's work that I've read to date, I will draw from these characters' experience in times when I need to renew myself. At that point the words to describe this novel will pour forth, and, as always with a Morrison novel, I'll smile and acknowledge that Toni Morrison is an extraordinary writer, who tell a story that you'll always remember.

Rating:
Summary: Morrison's best
Review: Jazz is by far one of Morrison's best works! The story is great, but not the strongest part. This book shines because it's so lyrical, so poetic, so magically written.

With the odd, experimental narrator it's almost like a long love letter, someone telling a story of lost love to a love that can not be fullfilled. When I read the final few pages I could see Morrison sitting down and writing this to that special someone she's never been able to communicate to.

Rating:
Summary: Jazz
Review: I found Jazz to be confusing in the beginning, however if it wasn't I don't believe it would be a Toni Morrison book. I say this in a good way. I have not read all her books but the books I have read has taken me awhile to get into before given up on the book all together. I thought it was enjoyable reading. It was a three way love affair that went bad but ended up back to a two way love affair.