Jazz by Toni Morrison
Door-to-door salesperson and formerly faithful husband Joe Trace kills his 18-year-old lover, Dorcas, whom he had been seeing for three months. His tenacious, devoted wife Violet makes an attempt to use a knife to mutilate the corpse at the funeral. the intricate humanity of black urban life is captured.
Jazz by Toni Morrison
9 used from $9.19
Amazon.com
- New
- Mint Condition
- Dispatch same day for order received before 12 noon
- Guaranteed packaging
- No quibbles returns
The Traces are a middle-aged married black couple in “the City” in the 1920s. Joe Trace has an affair with Dorcas Manfred, a young girl, whom he later kills in the middle of a party, though the girl’s aunt/guardian doesn’t press charges, and his wife Violet “Violent” Trace attempts to disfigure the dead girl in the casket at her funeral. Without giving anything away about the book, that is basically it. Jazz has a unique flavour that sets it apart from Morrison’s other works and makes this book more than enjoyable to read. It does this by using nearly sensuous language to explain the stories behind the story, which is prevalent in Morrison’s novels.
It takes place in the 1920s and features a lovely mingling of jazz, the streets of Harlem, and a sense of romance and possibility. Formally, the book has the sense of some jazz music. It has the effect of being composed of riffs, improvisations, and refrains. It is a fairly experimental book in that regard, which may be why it hasn’t received as much attention or praise as other works in her body of work. As we discuss New York and its fiction, we keep going back to the novel’s themes of desire and drunkenness.
