Okay, you might not actually be hearing the saxophones and the trumpet solos and the velvety clarinet, but for all of us boring people without the superpower of synesthesia, this book is the closest you'll get to sweet sensory overlap.īecause this is a novel that's written as jazz. Luckily for you, luckily for us, luckily for everyone, this is exactly what Toni Morrison has given us in Jazz. Imagine being able to taste shapes, or smell colors, or feel odors. We always thought synesthesia-the condition where senses overlap-would be the coolest. What is Jazz About and Why Should I Care? What's more American than apple pie? Jazz. So basically, Jazz is what happens when one of the most lauded American authors writes about the most original American musical form, the most scandalous decade of the American 20th century, and one of the most despicable chapters in American history. It's also the middle book in a trilogy that explores African American history, starting with Beloved (which won the Pulitzer Prize-jeez, Toni Morrison, way to take all the prizes) and ending with Paradise. Jazz was published in 1992, a year before Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Jazz, like jazz music itself, finds its roots in some of the most violent and hate-ridden chapters of American history. Jazz, like jazz music itself, is composed of multiple voices and every character is either crazy or lying about something. What kind of mayhem? The kind that only the Jazz Age can provide: cheating spouses and wayward women and knives and guns and illegitimate children and a lovesick parrot. Fifty-year-old Joe Trace shoots his eighteen-year-old girlfriend dead, and Joe's wife, Violet, bum-rushes her corpse at the funeral and tries to cut her face.

Imagine if skirts today were two feet shorter than skirts a decade ago. Hemlines alone rose two feet in the span of a decade. The Jazz Age was the sexiest, most provocative era since the toga parties of Ancient Rome, and people of the time were super shocked. Because what Morrison does in Jazz is to give a sense of both the scandal of jazz music and its historical context. No offense, Shmooper, but until you read Jazz and wander down the seductive streets of Harlem circa 1926 with Toni Morrison as your guide, your Jazz Age education is totally lacking. Maybe you've even seen the Ken Burns documentary. Maybe you think you know the Jazz Age: You've been to a couple of Great Gatsby-themed parties, you wore a sweet pair of two-toned shoes or some long pearls, and you've listened to a couple of old Louis Armstrong songs.

Jazz novel by toni morrison