Not many authors can pull a reader into a world like Toni Morrison can. ‘Jazz’ exemplifies this amazing ability of hers. She’s taken her time in the beggining to form 1926 Harlem in the mind of the reader, from the streets themselves to the people who inhabit them. Twisting characters, setting, narrative, and theme into a single torrent of information is something Morrison does better than any author I’ve read. The way the people think, the way the city treats them, and migrant patterns of the time give the setting a life of its own. It’s as much a character as the people the story is about, and has as much impact (and often even more) on their lives as anything else. Violet and Joe Trace are married to the city as much as they are to each other, moreso in Joe’s case. Their actions are informed by their relationships to the city, and to others, in such a concrete way. By the time you’re halfway through, all their dysfunction, all their oddities, all the strange and wonderful and dangerous influence the city has on them, they all start to make perfect sense in a way that can even be frightening to grasp. It makes sense why Joe would cheat, and then kill his lover, even if there’s no world in which that ever could make sense. I know why Violet let her canaries and the parrot out into the winter cold to to starve and freeze. I get why living in a massive urban jungle where people do those awful things above is irresistible to some people. Morrison goes beyond putting the reader in the shoes of another and instead forms a world to drag you into. Putting yourself in their shoes is only natural as an inhabitant of that place yourself. I can’t wait to see where the rest of the story goes, even if I’m afraid to read it sometimes.
Thank you for reading,
Benjamin Hawley
Dangerous Day Job 