Toni Morrison’s Jazz is a simply titled novel, but this simplicity belies the complexity of the narrative structure to which the word “jazz” alludes. Toni Morrison’s novel “Jazz” is experimental in that it challenges the conventions of the American canonical literary narrative. Toni Morrison incorporates elements of the genre of jazz music as a way of both honoring African American modes of expression and creative and cultural production, as well as creating new, hybrid forms of expression. The result is a novel that can be frustrating and difficult, at times, for the reader to follow. Morrison’s narrative is, by turns, tangential, digressive, and improvisational and like other novels by Morrison reliant on symbols, it can never be taken at face value. Nevertheless, understanding the underlying structural and thematic significance of this narrative approach by analyzing the novel’s structure through the lens of jazz music helps the reader to not only develop a tolerance for the novel, but to adapt himself or herself to its expressive power. As a result, new possibilities open not only for Toni Morrison as an author, but for the reader as well.
Jazz the novel by Toni Morrison, like the origins of jazz music itself, is situated primarily in the 1920s, and its focal point is Harlem, New York. Establishing a sense of place, as well as the mood that pervades it and the characters that populate it, is crucial to the “plot” of the jazz tune, whether with or without lyrics, and the same is true for Morrison’s novel. In the novel, Morrison describes “the city,” New York City, in vivid and descriptive visual terms. The narrator says in one of the important quotes from “Jazz” by Toni Morrison, “I’m crazy about this City. Daylight slants like a razor cutting the buildings in half. In the top half I see looking faces…Below is shadow where any blasé thing takes place….” (Morrison 5). This speech is not normal speech that one uses to communicate; it is highly visual, imagistic, and sonorous. The speaker does not necessarily hurry to proceed from this description to the next point; she riffs on her meditation about the City for as long as she likes, and only then does she proceed with her narrative. This narrative technique in “Jazz” by Toni Morrison is unusual for literature, but is entirely familiar to the genre of jazz music, which wanders and improvises, plays with the relationships between sounds, and juxtaposes seemingly incongruent musical ideas in innovative ways. In Jazz, Morrison does the same.
There are other elements of speech in Jazz that are reminiscent of the musical genre yet represent an experimental foray for literature. Consider, for example, that the characters do not always speak in formal or complete sentences. At times, there are just enough words to convey a general idea or impression, and the reader must fill in any perceived gaps. The astute reader picks up on this fact on the very first page of the novel when scanning through the quotes from this first part. The narrator is describing a woman and she adds, “Know her husband, too” (Morrison 1). The absence of the subject, “I,” mimics colloquial speech; extraneous details are omitted and the reader has to pick up the narrative “beat” or lose the novel’s rhythm completely. “Proper” English is rejected as false in this novel; instead, Toni Morrison’s characters must express themselves with their own authentic voices, even at the possible expense of losing the reader. In a sense, like jazz music, the creative act of production becomes more important than the fact that the work will be received by an audience.
The numerous tangents and digressions in Jazz by Toni Morrison also indicate the idiosyncratic narrative structure of the novel and allude to the influence that the genre of jazz music had on Morrison’s development of this novel. Temporally speaking, the “Jazz” by Toni Morrison weaves back and forth between the early twentieth century and earlier times, introducing a densely populated collection of characters in two different locations whose relationships can be difficult to understand. Yet perhaps Toni Morrison’s intention and expectation is not that the reader will be able to keep track of all of these people, places, and relationships, but rather that he or she will capture a general impression or sense of them. As with jazz music, the narrative structure of Toni Morrison’s novel disrupts expectations that the reader has developed while reading conventionally written texts. The difference in the narrative structure calls for a distinct reading strategy. Again, the reader of “Jazz” by Toni Morrison can take his or her cue from jazz music in order to understand the most effective strategy for understanding Morrison’s novel. Attempt to understand the work conceptually, globally, and do not get bogged down in small details that can distract one from comprehending the overall significance of the work.
Another aspect of the narrative structure of this Toni Morrison novel that is reminiscent of jazz music is the way in which the same story is played out again and again, but in different ways. The narrator of Jazz by Toni Morrison explains the essential elements of the plot, but reworks and revises them again and again in multiple retellings. Each time she does, a new voice or new perspective emerges, layering on new meanings. Jazz music does the same, playing with a melodic or harmonic theme again and again, but tweaking it slightly and creating a variation—or many variations– on the theme. Each time the listener,–or in the case of the novel, the reader—hears the tune or reads the story, each variation yields a richness or alternate perspective that could not have been possible with a single telling. In Toni Morrison’s novel, certain words, like certain stories, bear repeating, if only to invite the reader to marvel at the sonoric properties of language. “‘Felice,’ he said. And kept on saying it. ‘Felice. Felice. Felice.’ With two syllables, not one like most people do….” (Morrison 212).
Still another way in which Morrison’s novel can be linked to jazz music and understood as the literary equivalent of a jazz composition is by examining the conclusion of Jazz. There is something ambivalent, ambiguous, and unsettling about the ending of the novel, which seems to lack a resolution according to the conventional understanding of that term and its traditional uses in literary narratives. Jazz music is the same. Endings can be abrupt and unexpected; they can also trail off inconclusively, simply holding or insistently repeating and then fading out on a certain note. The final passages in Jazz evoke the same kinds of feelings as do these highest points of a jazz music composition, and they rely upon the same kinds of techniques and resources. In fact, the concluding lines of Jazz build up and threaten to explode, but they then fade out, almost without the reader realizing that the novel, like the song, is over: “Say make me, remake me. You are free to do it and I am free to let you because look, look. Look where your hands are now” (Morrison 272). The three sets of repeated words or phrases reinforce a sense of final urgency. Yet the reader is left to either accept the ambiguity of such a conclusion, or to attempt to make sense out of it. Either way, the experience of receiving the creative production can be fulfilling and pleasurable.
Toni Morrison’s novel, Jazz, is an experimental novel that borrows extensively from the ideas behind and the expressions of jazz music. Honoring her cultural peers from another creative genre by appropriating and adapting their techniques for her own use, Morrison creates a text that represents the hybrid of two powerfully creative and expressive art forms: music and literature. The result is an idiosyncratic narrative structure that can be challenging. Admittedly, the novel Jazz is not intended for every reading audience. However, the reader who can approach the novel on its own terms, rather than forcing conventional literary analytic frameworks to an interpretation of Jazz will be likely to have more pleasurable reading experience and a more profound one. Sometimes, a novel is not only about the events that it describes or a particular moral or lesson that its author intends to convey. Sometimes, and this is one of those times, a novel is less about the product of creation than the process that resulted in its publication. As the reading audience, we must decide whether we will accept Jazz on its own terms and improvise our reading style, just as Morrison improvised her writing style.
Cited From: Article Myriad