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bookgazing) wrote2009-01-30 04:09 am
bookgazing) wrote2009-01-30 04:09 am
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Jazz - Toni Morrison
Two weeks ago I was on my first date in two years. Despite being a short lunch date it flagged badly, mostly because I didn’t want to be there. We’d passed through every area of first date conversation at speed, the guy couldn’t even keep where I lived in his head and I was happily settling down to watch the people outside the restaurant whilst eating some fantastic gnocchi. Desperate to engage me my date brought out the big conversational guns.
“Read any good books lately?” he asked.
I told him I was reading ‘Jazz’ by Toni Morrisson. I thought it sounded pretentious, even though it was true, but it turned out he had no idea who Toni Morrisson was.
“What’s that about then?”
I thought about it. How do you describe Morrison’s novel which is full of loss, longing, belonging and the different gradients of race wrapped up in the heat of the jazz age, quickly to a disinterested listener? I decided to give him the book jacket blurb, “It’s about a man who shoots his sweetheart. Then when his wife finds out she tries to disfigure the corpse with a knife.”
Fear flashed across his face and we left soon after.
This short synopsis certainly makes the book sound ‘dangerous’ and it is. Morrison intends her books to be dangerous so that readers are pushed headfirst into the violent, bitter consequences that inhabit lifetimes informed by slavery. In ‘Beloved’ a young slave kills a child with a handsaw only to find it grown, alive in appearance but with the cruel need of the dead. ‘The Bluest Eye’ is based around a vicious incestuous rape. Morrison wants readers to be shaken from the complacency induced by day time films where slaves released from bondage easily go on to have well adjusted lives, unaffected by years of whips and put downs.
Once again in ‘Jazz’ she shows the aftermath of slavery and how it continues to shape the path of the character’s freedom. Joseph’s life is shaped by the memory of his mother ‘Wild’, driven mad by slavery. His wife, Violet has hopes bound up with stories her mother told her of a ‘golden’ child, born to a wealthy white woman and so saved from slavery. Joseph's lover, Dorcas grows up in an age when free black culture is developing in jazz music but she is held back from participating fully by her aunt. She craves acceptance but only finds satisfaction when being corrected, conscious that her clothes, her hair, her skin do not fit some kind of unknown requirement. Characters from all generations are marked by the after effects of slavery.
In the forward Morrison explains the frustration that decided the kind of narrative ‘Jazz’ would have. Unable to start writing the book in a way that pleased her but immersed in the feel of her characters and their age Morrison just started writing that. Instead of using a linear narrative she forms her story out of the details of the age, like the smell of perfume and the way women wore their hats. This detail accumulates to create not just a picture of characters but a moving narrative and the atmosphere they lived in. Morrison knew she didn’t want to just place characters in a story and have the reader pick up carefully placed clues, alluding to the historical setting. She strives to write in the language of the period, not just using the slang but writing in the rhythm of the music and pace of live at the time. Probably my favourite thing about ‘Jazz’ was the pulse of the periods emotions expressed by the rhythms of the language.
This book is strong, bitchy, violent and vivid. It’s full of the heated atmosphere of the jazz age, undercut by the uncertainty of people trying to build a way of living free. An unashamedly dangerous book to start ‘The Year of Reading Dangerously Challenge’.
Random Questions of Exploration:
Why are Joseph and Violet childless? She steals the baby – why do they not have children of their own?
What causes the fire at Dorcas’ parent’s house?
“Read any good books lately?” he asked.
I told him I was reading ‘Jazz’ by Toni Morrisson. I thought it sounded pretentious, even though it was true, but it turned out he had no idea who Toni Morrisson was.
“What’s that about then?”
I thought about it. How do you describe Morrison’s novel which is full of loss, longing, belonging and the different gradients of race wrapped up in the heat of the jazz age, quickly to a disinterested listener? I decided to give him the book jacket blurb, “It’s about a man who shoots his sweetheart. Then when his wife finds out she tries to disfigure the corpse with a knife.”
Fear flashed across his face and we left soon after.
This short synopsis certainly makes the book sound ‘dangerous’ and it is. Morrison intends her books to be dangerous so that readers are pushed headfirst into the violent, bitter consequences that inhabit lifetimes informed by slavery. In ‘Beloved’ a young slave kills a child with a handsaw only to find it grown, alive in appearance but with the cruel need of the dead. ‘The Bluest Eye’ is based around a vicious incestuous rape. Morrison wants readers to be shaken from the complacency induced by day time films where slaves released from bondage easily go on to have well adjusted lives, unaffected by years of whips and put downs.
Once again in ‘Jazz’ she shows the aftermath of slavery and how it continues to shape the path of the character’s freedom. Joseph’s life is shaped by the memory of his mother ‘Wild’, driven mad by slavery. His wife, Violet has hopes bound up with stories her mother told her of a ‘golden’ child, born to a wealthy white woman and so saved from slavery. Joseph's lover, Dorcas grows up in an age when free black culture is developing in jazz music but she is held back from participating fully by her aunt. She craves acceptance but only finds satisfaction when being corrected, conscious that her clothes, her hair, her skin do not fit some kind of unknown requirement. Characters from all generations are marked by the after effects of slavery.
In the forward Morrison explains the frustration that decided the kind of narrative ‘Jazz’ would have. Unable to start writing the book in a way that pleased her but immersed in the feel of her characters and their age Morrison just started writing that. Instead of using a linear narrative she forms her story out of the details of the age, like the smell of perfume and the way women wore their hats. This detail accumulates to create not just a picture of characters but a moving narrative and the atmosphere they lived in. Morrison knew she didn’t want to just place characters in a story and have the reader pick up carefully placed clues, alluding to the historical setting. She strives to write in the language of the period, not just using the slang but writing in the rhythm of the music and pace of live at the time. Probably my favourite thing about ‘Jazz’ was the pulse of the periods emotions expressed by the rhythms of the language.
This book is strong, bitchy, violent and vivid. It’s full of the heated atmosphere of the jazz age, undercut by the uncertainty of people trying to build a way of living free. An unashamedly dangerous book to start ‘The Year of Reading Dangerously Challenge’.
Random Questions of Exploration:
Why are Joseph and Violet childless? She steals the baby – why do they not have children of their own?
What causes the fire at Dorcas’ parent’s house?