An Ode to Jazz

Why did this post topic take so long???

Listen to Toni Morrison talk about her motivation for writing and you will know why I have to write. If you have never heard her, here she is: The Write to Live (my title). Toni Morrison is the preeminent literary scholar. She writes about whatever she feels, however she feels she should write it. She takes normal, everyday topics and makes them literary masterpieces. Have you ever thought about what slavery was like before the image of slave was automatically a black person? Read A Mercy. Do you have a best friend who slept with your husband? Well, Morrison wrote about this issue in Sula. Have you ever heard of pedophilia? Morrison not only writes about this but it isn't even a crime in the Love. What about black girls with blonde hair and blue eyes? In The Bluest Eye, Morrison explores the psychological reasoning behind black girls wanting to be white. And in Jazz, my personal Morrison favorite, she looks at how music and feeling are intertwined.

Ahh Jazz, my beloved Jazz. Maybe because I love music, I love Jazz. The texts starts off a little complicated with the opening line,

"Sth, I know this woman"

First of all, what the heck is "Sth?" And who is "that woman?" Both of these questions made me immediately put the text down and go back on Facebook... Where I wanted to be anyway. Commercial break: Why the heck is Facebook so entertaining? All you do is look at pictures and statuses. Legal stalking, that's why. Anyway, the text was a required read for class so I had to pick the book back up. One thing the venerable Emma Waters-Dawson taught was that Toni Morrison tells you everything you need to know on the first page of the text. By the end of the first page you knew that "this woman" lived with a flock of birds and she attempted to slice open the face of a dead woman. Yes, a dead woman. I continued reading to find out why the dead woman needed to be [re]killed. It appears the woman had slept with "this woman's" husband and the husband had fallen into "spooky" love with the woman. And there begins the saga on Lenox Avenue. 

Jazz changed my intellectual life. Toni Morrison weaves a story about love, music, and the city up in a little ball that draws you in and doesn't let go. You envision the passion and promise inherent in a school get-together while simultaneously feeling the pain of Dorcas, a young woman, as she is dissed and dismissed by young men at the party. Ordinary topic, extraordinary depiction.

Morrison makes the reader suspend disbelief even though the text isn't magically realistic. Morrison makes you use and embrace your imagination. Nothing is as it seems. Everyone has a backstory. Everyone has a motivation. Violet Trace, the protagonist, was essentially an orphan, as was her husband Joe. Joe never had anything to call his own so he chose a young girl to fill his void. The young girl's parents were killed in a fire so she was used to being upended by life. So when she is sent to live with her aunt, she takes it as just the circumstance of her life. When her aunt's husband leaves her because of her prudishness, she tries to iron the wrinkles out of the world by becoming a seamstress. But this straitlaced woman because friends with the emotionally unstable Violet because they complement each other. Each has something the other needs. Where Alice is sane, Violet has been given over to insanity but they still understand each other. Commercial break: I have a friend who I never agree with, on anything, but there's no one who understands me better. #UsuallyIDon'tDoThis but shout-out to TOH.

Morrison makes you understand the un-understandable. She makes insanity common. She makes the unreal natural. Jazz is a just another one of her literary masterpieces. Yes, Morrison is difficult. Yes, her texts are complicated. Yes, her novels need to be read three times: Once to see what the text is about, Twice to understand what the text is about, and Thrice to interpret what the text is about. But each time is worth it and you will be a better person for it. So go ahead, pick it up. You'll probably put it down but pick it back up. And then pick it up again.