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Jazz

By Toni Morrison

(32)

| Others | 9780606191968

Book Description

2 casettes / 3 hours
Read by Toni Morrison

From the author of Paraidse and Beloved, Jazz, is spellbinding for the haunting passion of its profound love story, and for the bittersweet lyricism and refined sensuality of its powerful and elegant style.

"Morrison's Continue

2 casettes / 3 hours
Read by Toni Morrison

From the author of Paraidse and Beloved, Jazz, is spellbinding for the haunting passion of its profound love story, and for the bittersweet lyricism and refined sensuality of its powerful and elegant style.

"Morrison's remarkable talent for storytelling naturally lends itself to the spoken word."
- The Arizona Republic

It is winter, barely three days into 1926, seven years after Armistice; we are in the scintillating City, around Lenox Avenue, "when all the wars are over and there will never be another one...At last, 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 and west, in search of promise.

Joe Trace--in his fifties, door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, erstwhile devoted husband--shoots to death his lover of three months, impetuous, eighteen-year-old Dorcas ("Everything was like a picture show to her"). At the funeral, his determined, hard-working wife, Violet, herself a hairdresser--who is given to stumbling into dark mental cracks, and who talks mostly to birds--tries with a knife to disfigure the corpse.

In a dazzling act of jazz-like improvisation, moving seamlessly in and out of past, present, and future, a mysterious voice--whose identity is a matter of each reader's imagination--weaves this brilliant fiction, at the same time showing how its blues are informed by the brutal exigencies of slavery. Richly combining history, legend, reminiscence, this voice captures as never before the ineffable mood, the complex humanity, of black urban life at a moment in our century we assumed we understood.

Jazz is an unprecedented and astonishing invention, a landmark on the American literary landscape--a novel unforgettable and for all time.

4 Reviews

  • A haunting tale about the marriage of Joe and Violet Trace, a relationship where the couple are not always in 'rhythm' with each other.
    The transition to a city life style was a difficult one for this African American couple having come from a slavery background.

    Is this helpful?

    ― Lindyloumac said on Sep 28, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • 也許因為期待不高，反而出乎意料的喜愛這本小說。
    Toni Morrison自己在＜前言＞中說這是一本形式與內容同等重要的小說，的確，如書名所示，書中的獨白、對談、私語、旁白均捕捉了爵士特殊的韻律，每段話語有其獨特的聲響，但又在這音樂之中。
    書中主要情節早已發生，在回憶之中不管是哪個角色、哪段話語都溢滿憂鬱情懷，又不至於過度沉溺，果然如爵士名曲般 "Kind of Blue"

    Is this helpful?

    ― Sophie said on Jun 5, 2008 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • I read this at the apartment in the early-mid 1990s. I do not recall the story much. I was in my Toni Morrison period. I think this was the last of her books I read.

    Is this helpful?

    ― Batona said on Apr 23, 2007 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

Book Details

  • Rating:
    (32)
    • 4 stars
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  • English Books
  • Others
  • ISBN-10: 0606191968
  • ISBN-13: 9780606191968
  • Publisher: Turtleback Books Distributed by Demco Media
  • Pub date: Apr 01, 1993
  • Also available as: Paperback, Hardcover, Audio Cassette and Library Binding
  • In other languages:
    • <span class='translatable' lang='Cover of '{[title]}''>Cover of '爵士樂'</span>
      爵士樂
      (繁體書)
    • <span class='translatable' lang='Cover of '{[title]}''>Cover of 'Jazz'</span>
      Jazz
      (Livres Français)
    • <span class='translatable' lang='Cover of '{[title]}''>Cover of 'Jazz'</span>
      Jazz
      (Libros en Español)
    • <span class='translatable' lang='Cover of '{[title]}''>Cover of 'Jazz'</span>
      Jazz
      (Libri Italiani)
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