Jazz

This post originally published January 23, 2010.

Author: Toni Morrison
Published: 1992
Publisher: Vintage
229 pages (paperback)
 
Summary: A story about black urban life, set in the 1920’s in a place referred to as the City (Harlem), the main story revolves around three people: Joe is a 50 year old door-to-door cosmetic salesman; Violet is Joe’s wife and an unlicensed hairdresser; and Dorca is a young teenage girl who Joe is having an affair with. In a fury of passion, confusion and agonizing love, Joe shoots Dorca to death, and cries for months afterwards in regret. Violet shows up at Dorca’s funeral and attempts to slice the dead girl’s face with a knife, but fails. Wanting to understand the situation, and to know more about Dorca, Violet seeks out Dorca’s aunt, Alice Manfred and befriends her.

My Thoughts: A book I had to read for my American Literature class. The back cover of the book has a similar summary to the one I typed up there (except I think I added more descriptions about the plot since the book’s summary was rather vague). Anyway, the plot summary sounded interesting at first, and hey, it says this book won a Nobel Prize in Literature, so I thought it must be good. But truth be told, I found the whole thing boring. If you look at the book as a piece of artwork, then yes, it is excellent, and that’s probably why my class is reading and analyzing this book. But as entertainment, or for leisurely reading? Not so much. It’s like looking at a famous painting — I can appreciate the complexity of it and the meaning behind it, but that doesn’t mean I like it and want to hang it in my living room.

It was just too difficult of a read for me. I don’t mean the language the books uses, but the way the scenes shift so quickly, and nothing seems to happen chronologically, which wouldn’t be the end of the world if I could make sense of it still. The story is not really about the plot, but about the characters and their fears, passions, obsessions, insecurities. It explains their whole back stories, and then in the last half of the book, it explained the lives of Joe’s mother and Violet’s grandmother and even Violet’s grandmother’s boss’s daughter’s son! It was all very confusing to be honest, and the shift from character to character is so abrupt I often missed it. After I finished the book, I read a chapter-by-chapter summary of the novel online because I was so confused, and the strange thing is, the summary outlined everything I already knew, so I guess, I DID understand what I was reading, I just couldn’t make sense of it, which really hindered me from enjoying it.

Not really much I can say about it. I don’t think this novel sucks by any means, but it’s certainly not fun to read. I’m glad it was only 229 pages because if it was any longer, I don’t know if I could have finished it.

My Rating: 1/5