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, 18-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 inour 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.
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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, 18-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 inour 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.
Imprint | Turtleback Books |
Country of origin | United States |
Release date | April 1993 |
Availability | Supplier out of stock. If you add this item to your wish list we will let you know when it becomes available. |
Authors | Toni Morrison |
Dimensions | 203 x 140mm (L x W) |
Format | Hardcover - Sewn / Vinyl |
Pages | 229 |
ISBN-13 | 978-0-606-19196-8 |
Barcode | 9780606191968 |
Categories | |
LSN | 0-606-19196-8 |