From: mim@nyxfer.UUCP
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Date: 28 Dec 92 20:57 PST
Subject: BK RVW: "Jazz" by Morrison
Nf-ID: #N:65ZiwB1w165w@nyxfer.uucp:-1929291627:000:3092
Nf-From: nyxfer.uucp!mim    Dec 28 20:57:00 1992


Subject: BK RVW: "Jazz" by Morrison
From: nyxfer!mim (Maoist Intl'ist Mvmnt)

 
Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
from the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM)
 
MIM Notes, Issue 69: October, 1992

Book Review:
                              "Jazz"
                         by Toni Morrison
                               1992

"Jazz," Toni Morrison's latest book, will not disappoint her fans.
In her fast-paced narrative style, Morrison continues to write
captivating novels wound around the everyday life and history of
Blacks in America.

There is much historical significance in this novel that a reader
unfamiliar with its setting will miss. This review will proceed
directly to the politics of the plot that people (such as this
reviewer) from this uninformed perspective can glean.

Set in New York City in 1926, the novel centers on the lives of a
married couple, Joe and Violet. Joe is one of the few faithful men
in his neighborhood -- until he has an affair with the 18-year-old
Dorcas. Fearing he will lose her, Joe kills Dorcas, making his
already suffering marriage intolerable. 

But Morrison's story is not one of sensational infidelity and sex.
Instead she explores the effect that individuals' upbringing and
history have on their everyday lives and relationships. "Jazz" is
a novel about people who take control of their lives, overcoming
the passivity that could keep them slaves to their environment and
history. Morrison celebrates the ability of two people who turn
their relationship and their lives around.

Morrison notes Blacks' well-founded fear of white people, the
hypocritical but popular rigid religious morality, and the
eroticization of male power taught by society -- all integral
parts of Black urban life in the 1920s and very relevant today.

Dorcas has left Joe for a man closer to her age who tells her what
to do, making her change everything from the way she laughs to the
way she dresses. Joe just wanted Dorcas to do whatever made her
happy, and Dorcas decides that the young man must like her more
because he cares enough to tell her what to do. Best of all, other
women want to have him too.

While most of her characters are unwilling to learn new ways to
live and take control of their lives, Morrison's main characters
change their lives against strong social pressure. This personal
revolution falls a bit short of the social revolution that MIM
might conclude its novels with, but it has the correct materialist
understanding that people create history and need not be pawns to
passing circumstances.

 --MC17

                               -30-
 
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