Jazz doesn’t seamlessly keep time

I understand some stuff I’m just not going to get. I egotistically like to consider myself a strong reader and an “ok” thinker too, and I do like to be challenged by what I’m reading (or watching, as the case may be), but I don’t get Toni Morrison’s Jazz. I’m not a big fan of the structure and sometimes “near” stream-of-conscience writing. If it’s jazz, it is free jazz.

The book starts at the end (or nearer to the end anyway). Joe and Violet have been married for ages and both are sort of tired of the arrangement in their own way. Joe has had a fling with Dorcus, but when Dorcus tried to end it, Joe killed her. Violet then showed up at the funeral and slashes at Dorcus’s face with a knife, while she lay in the casket. That’s how the book starts. We then delve into what made Joe and Violet each their respective persons, with much of their history told in dream-like flashbacks. They both are carrying around a lot of baggage from their mothers, and are only a generation or so removed from slavery, so they have that on their shoulders too. They both come from violent beginnings and have enough issues to keep a modern day psycologist busy for years.

Violet doesn’t talk to Joe much, so he had sought out Dorcus mostly for companionship. Violet had spent most of her life not wanting any children, until it became too late. I guess in a way she saw the much younger Dorcus as an interloper in more ways than one. After Dorcus is dead and the above scene has played out, we finally get a new companion for Joe and Violet. Dorcus’s friend, Felice, arrives, and since we are all out in the open now, Joe and Violet embrace her and ultimately find each other again.

I have to admit, when I finished this book, I googled “Toni Morrison Jazz overrated” to see if I was alone in my thoughts, and I got more hits for her novel Beloved than this one. Since that book too is on my list to read one day, I have to say I’m not exactly looking forward to it. I’m not going to say Jazz is a bad novel, by any stretch, and I can definitely appreciate Morrison’s contributions to the genre and her voice. This one just didn’t connect to me.