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... reminds the Morrisons style of switching from fragmented phrases to run-on, standard and complete sentences. In the same manner, jazz music can be different in its moods, structure, and sounding. Moreover, it seems that the most important idea of jazz is to surprise listeners, to exceed their expectations, to be experimental, rhythmic and harmonic. Morrison, having a very good feeling for the requirements jazz poses on all its imitators, tries to reach the same effect by unusual, non-standard punctuation and sentence structure. The author also uses the answer-question format to make the description of jazz even more colourful.
This format reminds the reader that call-and-response interplay between minister and congregation in traditional black churches. In addition to this question-answer format technique, Morrison also secretly attempts to make her novel interactive to establish a dialog with readers, to push them to participate within the novel. Such reader-involvement is most explicitly shown in places where the author switches to the second person in her narration. For example, in the description of the scene of the cabin, which Golden Gray visits while searching for his father, the narrator uses you. Such a usage of the second person implies to addressing both the reader and Golden Gray: The sigh he [Golden Gray] makes is deep, a hungry air-take for the strength and perseverance all life, but especially his, requires. Can you see the fields beyond, crackling and drying in the wind?
The blade of blackness rising out of nowhere, brandishing and then gone? (153). In the last lines of the novel, Morrison uses a similar technique. Being greedy for Violet and Joes public love, the narrator reveals her wishes to experience such a free love: I... have...
longed to show it -- to be able to say out loud what they have no need to say at all: That I have loved only you, surrendered my whole self reckless to you and nobody else (229). The narrator could be referring to her imagined lover when using "you"; but she may also be acting as a sounding board for Morrison herself who seems to challenge the reader to revel in the literary experience. Analysing this final passage, Paula Gallant Eckard implies that "the narrator speaks directly to us"; later she shrewdly making an emphasis that "In all probability, our hands are holding the written text itself, and as readers we 'make' and 'remake' its music, language and meaning" (19). It is incredible how Morrison crates in her own words the "places and spaces so that the reader can participate" ("Rootedness" 341), in this way providing an artificial environment that requires complete reader involvement. Such an environment reflects strikingly the dynamics of a live jazz performance, during which call-and-response audience participation invariably engenders an interactive musical discourse between musicians and listeners. Making the novels jazz feeling and tone more intensive, the verb tense shifting helps to create a sense of ever-shifting direction.
Throughout the text, the verb tense constantly changes from present, to past and present progressive, sometimes shifting without warning or clear reason. These changing's are familiar to a person basically acknowledged in jazz, where the different band members share the solo spotlight, each offering his or her own "view" or interpretation of the tune being played. These tense shifts are also reminiscent of changing time signatures -- a trend pioneered in jazz by pianist Dave Brubeck and his experiments with compound meters. In Brubeck's "Blue Rondo A La Turk, " for instance, the meter alternates between an unorthodox 9 / 8 and regular 4 / 4 times; this odd juxtaposition of meters creates a clear and unequivocal tension (during the 9 / 8 measures) and release (when the 4 / 4 measures are played).
Similar sensations and relaxation definitely occurs while reading Jazz. That is why the novel is more likely to be understandable for a person, which understand jazz itself, at least in its basic forms. According to Eckard, the final peculiarity of Morrisons jazzy technique is in the constant usage of jazz imagery and words specific to jazz. Even the first word of the novel, "Sth, " recalls the sound of a ride cymbal (the principal cymbal of jazz drum rhythms) or, according to Rodrigues, the "muted sound splash of a brush against a snare drum" (733). Eckard says that jazz terms permeate the text (16). Later, she supports the claims with the textual evidence, pointing to the words like triplets, duets, quartets (Jazz 50) and scatty (Jazz 89) as jazz references.
Executing a close reading of her own, Eckard suggests that the following passage of Jazz, in which the narrator describes Violet's hairdressing techniques, is rendered through musical terms (16): When the customer comes and Violet is studying the thin grey hair, murmuring Ha mercy at appropriate breaks in the old ladys stream of confidences, Violet is restating the cord that holds the stove door to its hinge and rehearsing the months plea for three more days to the rent collector. She thinks she longs for rest, a carefree afternoon to... sit with the birdcages and listen to the children play in snow. (Jazz 16) Responding to this passage, Eckard argues that the words such as murmuring, stream, breaks, cord (chord), rehearsing, rest, listen, play carry jazz meanings" (16). According to her analysis, Ha mercy is considered to be a linguistic punctuation of a metaphorical stream of jazz" (16). The word birdcage refers to Charlie Parker's nickname, Bird, as well as to the famous jazz clubs, Birdland in New York and Birdhouse in Chicago (17). This Eckard's evidence helps even more to ground the novel more firmly on a solid jazz base.
It is interesting how Morrison manages to incorporate the sounds and rhythms of jazz in her unique style of narrating, and configurations of jazz in her structures and compositions. For example, some people say that Jazz begins with a leading melody. In a very unusual manner, the narrator tells the most important events of the novel in the first two paragraphs of it. The reader finds out about Joe and Dorcas affair, about the eventual murder of Dorcas committed by Joe, and about Violets attempt to stab Dorcas corpse at the funeral. Thus, Morrison accomplishes what she claims she set out to do: that is, establish her "narrative line or melody... immediately in the first pages" (Hackney 6) of the text.
Rodrigues alleges that starting from the beginning set melody to the end of the novel are amplifications, with improvisations, variations and solo statements, a virtuoso display of jazz (740). Moreover, Rodrigues maintains that right after the primary head arrangement, Jazz suddenly drops the reader without warning, into a confusing world (733). Continuing the analysis of Jazz, Rodrigues successfully attempts to describe the comprehension of Morrisons novel: The confusion arises from the speed of the telling. Fragments of information rush along unconnectedly... We read on impatiently, wanting to interrupt and ask questions, but this voice [of the narrator] is in a reckless hurry to tell everything at once without stopping... It slows down at last, a little out of breath, hinting at some kind of mystery at the end [of the first section].
We read on, bewildered but intrigued, looking at the words, listening to their rhythm, their rhythms, seeking desperately to discover the meanings of the text. Halfway through the novel we pause to take stock, to put things together, to get our bearings. (734) "Like a soaring trumpet" (Eckard 14), the story follows along an indefinite way, sometimes repeating itself, sometimes moving off on abrupt tangents, but always turning back to the head. The chapter breaks also contribute, in their own curious way, to the jazz-like structure of the novel. Instead of dividing the sections of her novel into carefully enumerated or titled sections, Morrison signifies each chapter break with blank pages. That is, she stops with one idea or motif, inserts at least one full page of white space, and then picks up the idea or motif from the last sentence of the preceding chapter in the first sentence of the subsequent chapter.
All the chapters operate under this design. For instance, the first chapter ends in the following way, with the narrator hinting at the state of Violet and Joe's relationship: He is married to a woman who speaks mainly to her birds. One of whom answers back: I love you (24). The next chapter then begins, Or used to (27).
In this way, Morrison starts right from where she left off. On this structural technique Rodrigues is stating: Morrison produces a textual continuum by using transitional slurs and glides across sections Such carry-overs make for rhythmic flow" (740). By bridging or linking her chapters as she does, Morrison creates a sense of rhythmic continuity within an otherwise circuitous and disconnected narrative. In case if the reader wants to stop reading after each chapter, the narrator makes this difficult to do, by transferring fluidly the ideas one by one. Following this idea, Rodrigues alleges that Morrison moves away from western standards of art tersely embodied in the symphony - through artificial chapter breaks: Unlike the clearly demarcated movements of a symphony, the sections of Jazz never come to a complete stop. Like non-stop sequences during a jam session, they keep moving restlessly on and on giving the text a jazz feel (740).
Finally, the multiple voices and varying points-of-view of the novel work in reflecting what Morrison calls the egalitarian nature of jazz music. The novel constantly shifts viewpoints and narrative tone: Violet, Joe, Dorcas, Alice, Golden Gray, Felice, and of course the narrator are among those characters who are permitted to give voice to their respective outlooks on the novels central events and life in general. As suggested earlier, this multiplicity of visions found within Morrison's novel mirrors the multi-instrumentation of combo jazz and the various solo viewpoints from which a tune is played by the different band members. Thus, the novel's overall structure, for all intents and purposes, breaks from such conventional narrative techniques as linear, horizontal movement, nicely divided chapters, and singular point-of-view. Instead, Jazz is recursive, tangential, disjointed yet rhythmic, and many-sided in its form. In this way, Morrison's novel is much like a jazz solo that explores all the angles, views, and possibilities available within a very wide and flexible melodic framework.
Morrison's novel will not come up to the expectations of readers counting on a more straightforward narrative, in much the same way that jazz music undercuts the expectations of its listeners. Jazz by Toni Morrison is a unique novel in many respects. The first, most obvious one is the fact that the reader seeing the title of the novel expects a literary description of jazz musicians, jazz clubs, jazz music itself, but instead gets a peace of literature that does not even mention the word jazz even a single time. This technique is not used by other authors so often and makes the novel even more interesting and exciting to the reader.
It is possible to understand the novel for someone, only if he or she is familiar with the jazz music itself. The language and sentence structures that are used in Jazz enhance the flavor of this remarkable music style and make its image in the novel even more colorful. Only a talented writer, such as Toni Morrison could create such an unusual and interesting in all aspects novel. Her Jazz does not simply narrate a life story of a certain group of people and tells the reader of their culture the author achieved much more in the novel. Using repetitions rhymes, abrupt, or, in contrast, run-on sentences, Morrison reaches the effect of playing a jazz solo using simple words.
Bibliography: An Inspired Life: Toni Morrison Writes and a Generation Listens, Interview, Dana Micucci, interviewer, Conversations with Toni Morrison. Gallant Eckard, Paula. "The Interplay of Music, Language, and Narrative in Toni Morrison's Jazz. " College Language Association Journal 38. 1 (September 1994): 11 - 19. Gates, Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Literary Criticism. New York 1985. Morrison, Toni, All that Jazz, Interview, Betty Fuel, interviewer.
UP of Mississippi, 1994 Morrison, Toni, Jazz. New York: Plume, 1992. Rice, Alan J. Jazzing It Up A Storm: The Execution and Meaning of Toni Morrison's Jazzy Prose Style. The Journal of American Studies 28 (1994): 423 - 32. Rodrigues, Eusebio L. "Experiencing Jazz. " Modern Fiction Studies 39. 3 - 4 (Fall/Winter 1993): 733 - 53.
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