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 (and, for me, on More...

I like Toni Morrison. Beloved is one of my top 10 favorite books of all time. My first Morrison, The Bluest Eye, took me by surprise with it's power. I appreciated the rhythm of Jazz, but couldn't connect to the story. More...

"...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.'"

"Maybe she thought she could solve the mystery of love that way. Good luck and let me know."

"...you have to be clever to figure out how to be welcoming and defensive at the same time. When to love something and when to quit. If you don't know how, you can end up out of control or controlled by some outside thing..."

"You are th More...

Just as 'Beloved' dealt with maternal love, in this work Morrison turns to jealousy and romantic love and produces another brilliant novel: poetic, vivid, sensual. Looking at the negative comments that some of the reviewers have given I think they mainly boil down to the effect that Morrison is difficult to read. If you're not willing to put in some effort and to actually use your imagination, then you had better return this to the book-store and swap it for that Stephen King novel you had your More...

The language of this book is so beautiful, which makes an interesting counter-point to the lives of the characters which often are so far from beautiful. The structure of the narrative can feel a little disjointed at times as Morrison jumps from time to time, narrator to narrator. Despite this she weaves a moving tale with light and shade like the eponymous music for which the story is named. I highly recommend the audiobook, which for me really made the poetry and rhythm of the words more appar More...

Of Morrison's 10 novels this is the 7th I've read, and though I believe she ranks with Melville, O'Connor, Faulkner, and DeLillo as the five truly great fiction writers this country has ever produced, I ended up viewing this book as quite mediocre. This is a shame, as the first half was at a 4.25 star level, with a very Morrisonesque love story of a salesman, his beautician wife, and the young woman who is loved and then murdered by the former before being stabbed at her own funeral by the latte More...

Morrison is able to navigate setting, tone and time better than any writer I've ever read, but she doesn't pull that off quite as well in Jazz. It took quite some time for me to get into the narrative of this novel, and once the writing finally hits its stride Morrison completely shifts focus from foreground to back-story. While the writing remains effective and thought-provoking, the storytelling suffers. At just 229 pages, there simply isn't enough room for the digressions taken in the latter More...

Not a whole lot to say about this one. I wanted to read something more literary and this was on clearance at Half-Price books. Certainly worth reading. Morrison has a very fluid style that keeps me turning pages. This book dragged in very few places, and the language was fun to read.

I seem to be reading her major books in reverse. "Jazz" has been called the second part of a trilogy with "Beloved" and "Paradise" focusing on parental love, erotic love, and religious love. I've read "Paradise" but More...

Avevo tentato di acquistare questo romanzo della Morrison parecchi mesi fa, su Amazon. Sono stata in ballo a lungo, finch�� non mi �� arrivata un'email, qualche tempo fa, che mi comunicava che il libro era irreperibile.
Ero gi�� rassegnata all'idea di prenderlo in prestito in biblioteca, quando la settimana scorsa ho voluto provare ancora una volta a controllarne la disponibilit��, ancora su Amazon.
Ce n'era una sola copia, usata, ed io l'ho presa al volo.
Oggi mi �� arrivato un pacchetto dalla Ant More...

Jazz is perhaps Morrison’s most unique and elusive novel. Nearly five years after winning the Pulitzer for Beloved and a year before she received the Nobel Prize, Jazz was published in 1992. The novel solidified Morrison’s reputation as a writer whose daring has no bounds, as she offers readers a maze of narratives that stretch out like branches but always remain connected to the tree. Alternating between the country and the city, between the past and the present, Jazz tells the story of Joe and More...

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 More...

Anyone who has been through adversity knows the view. It’s that view of life stripped down to nothing but the basic. All you’re left with is your breath, and sometimes that feels like it’s slipping away. But you still have something, even if it’s ugly, even if it has no map, even if no one cares. What happens next is a choice. You can choose to take the basics of life that are left and build around them. What you weave becomes something on your terms. Why else does adversity create some of the b More...

In my mind, Toni Morrison is not so much a writer as she is a highly skilled carpet weaver with a degree in neuroscience.

Weaver: Her stories are intricate, complex, and beautiful, in a way that reminds me of high quality rugs. At a pace that feels both comfortable and natural, but is in reality only known to her, she introduces disparate narrative threads that she then weaves and intertwines with one another in the most unexpected ways, creating dozens of patterns of varying size and shape that More...

Here we have a rather twisted love triangle consisting of Joe and Joe's wife, Violet (often referred to as Violent due to some of her actions), and Joe's young lover, Dorcas. The narrative has more to do with jazz than the actual story, in that it flows musically (yet discordantly at times), reminiscent of jazz/blues music. Jumping from 1920s Harlem to the antebellum South, there is an exceptional amount of history in this rather small book.

I felt rather disconnected from the story itself, never More...

229 pages. Donated 2010 May.

Jazz embraces the vibrant music and lifestyle of 1920s Harlem, an urban renaissance of opportunity and glamour. A novel of murder, hard lives, and broken dreams, Jazz sways with a lyric medley of voices and human consciousness.
Joe Trace and his wife Violet were part of the migration of black southerners to Harlem; madly in love with each other and the idea of this urban mecca, they "traindanced into the city." But like so many of the marriages in Morrison's novels, th More...

Jazz is by far the weakest link in Toni's early (pre 2005) books. The Bluest Eye was a very hard read, no pleasure, but a great work of art, and Beloved was a bit overwrought for my tastes, but ALL of her other pre 2005 work rates her as a major important writer. There is almost nothing to redeem this little book. Maybe if it had been written by a lesser writer, I would feel more kindly towards it, but compared to Sula, Tar Baby, Song of Solomon, Bluest Eye, and even Beloved, and certainly when More...

[This review first appeared in Imprint, University of Waterloo, June 26, 1992]

"Sth, I know that woman. She used to live with a flock of birds on Lenox Aveune. 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."

There is a school of literary criticism that holds to the belief that black women writers are doubly discriminated against in their quest for intellectual recogniti More...

(FROM JACKET) It is winter, barely three days into 1926, seven years after Armistice; we are in the scintillating City, around Lenox Avenue, "when all wars are over and there will never be another one...At least, at last, everything's ahead...Here comes the new. Look out. There goes the sad stuff. The bad stuff. The things-nobody-could-help stuff." But amid the euphoric decisiveness, a tragedy ensues among people who had train-danced into the City, from points south adn west, in search of promis More...

I fell in love with Toni Morrison in high school. I was in France--- and my future English teacher gave me a list of books to read in preparation for AP English my senior year. I was HUNGRY for literature in English....and devoured Song of Solomon. Loved that book. And I loved The Bluest Eye....and then in college Beloved. I did not love Sula....and I did not love this book. Fifty pages in and the only reason I stuck with the book was because it was written by Toni Morrison.

The writing is dry.. More...

Not sure why, but this is my least favorite Morrison novel so far.

As always, I have many positive things to say about the writing. Morrison has an amazing way of expressing romance and whimsy even in the most uncomfortable situations. There was some amazing writing in this story. Some lines were so deep I stared at them for a while before moving on. The characters' memories hold a lot depth and make you hungry for the rest of the story. Therein lies the problem.

I found the story to be so caugh More...

SPOILERS

Overview: Joe Trace is a middle aged married man (Violet, wife) who has an affair with an 18 year old Dorkas and shoots her over anguish of her breaking up with him.

Characters: The first half of the book looked at Violet and touched on the affair and general growing up aspects in what I would call a simple to read type writing. However, the second half of the book was almost written by a different author. I actually had to read 10% of the book again because I had difficulty understandin More...

Jazz is the story of a couple living in Harlem during the Jazz Age, and by the "Jazz Age" I don't mean F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jazz Age--it is anything but that. Joe and Violet's relationship is virtually falling apart, due to some adultery and murder, which makes for a juicy start to the story. Morrison then takes us on a journey back a few generations, where we see that Joe and Violet's stormy relationship is the cause of generations worth of disfunction. It's a fascinating study of "the sins of More...

"I laughed but before I could agree with the hairdressers that she was crazy, she said, 'What's the world for if you can't make it up the way you want it?'
"'The way I want it?'
"'Yeah. The way you want it. Don't you want it to be something more than what it is?'
"'What's the point? I can't change it.'
"'That's the point. If you don't, it will change you and it'll be your fault cause you let it. I let it. And messed up my life.'
"'Messed it up how?'
"'Forgot it.'
"'Forgot?'
"'Forgot it was mine. My life More...

(possible spoilers below)

But I can’t say that aloud; I can’t tell anyone that I have been waiting for this all my life and that being chosen to wait is the reason I can. If I were able I’d say it. Say make me, remake me. You are free to do it and I am free to let you because look, look. Look where your hands are. Now.

This is my favorite quote from Jazz. Morrison is one of my favorite authors, but the thing I like most about Jazz is its interesting way of handling voices, language, characters an More...

This is a sad tale of love, revenge, heartache and tragedy soulfully told by the expert word-smith Morrison whose prose just seems to lap over me like water. I absolutely love her writing and it has a sing-song quality which suits the period in this novel, the era of early jazz, which is appealing to me. She can set the tone of her backdrops so evocatively in very few words. The musical quality of her prose suits the storyline in this novel very well. This is the third Morrison book I have read More...

An affair, murder, violence, loss and love are all themes Toni Morrison blends with the skill of a musician in Jazz. Published in 1992, the novel took place in the 1920s, in the prime era of jazz. Joe Trace, a door-to-door cosmetics salesman has an affair with Dorcas, a young girl who thrives on attention and affection. In a fit of jealousy, Joe kills Dorcas, who will not speak or see him anymore. At the young girl's funeral, Joe's wife, Violet, is overtaken by another being she terms that girl

More...

I'm really intrigued by life in 1920s America, so I thought that this book was right up my alley. It started out nicely, but eventually, I got tired of not seeing any conversation at the beginning of the novel. I suppose it was the writer's intention to be as descriptive as possible.Later on though, I realised that the narrator of the story was never mentioned,which kind of put me off, because they were observing and recalling the whole situation from a witness's point of view.At one point, I ev More...

Check out what I wrote in my blog: http://lunairereadings.blogspot.com/2...



I will never forget the beauty of this book that starts with the statement that the heroine was an ugly young girl. She was young and ugly; and started to sleep with this old and disgusting married man that finally got obsessed with her and ended up wounding her on the shoulder with a small firearm. She didn't want anything to do with him and she decided that it was better to die than to give up; so she let herself bleed More...