Jazz

by Toni Morrison

Overview

From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner, a passionate, profound story of love and obsession that brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of Black urban life. With a foreword by the author.

“As rich in themes and poetic images as her Pulitzer Prize–winning Beloved.... Morrison conjures up the hand of slavery on Harlem’s jazz generation. The more you listen, the more you crave to hear.” —Glamour

In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe’s wife, Violet, attacks the girl’s corpse. This novel “transforms a familiar refrain of jilted love into a bold, sustaining time of self-knowledge and discovery. Its rhythms are infectious” (People).

"The author conjures up worlds with complete authority and makes no secret of her angst at the injustices dealt to Black women.” —The New York Times Book Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679411673
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/07/1992
Edition description:	Older Edition
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	509,400
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

TONI MORRISON is the author of eleven novels and three essay collections. She received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1993 the Nobel Prize in Literature. She died in 2019.

Hometown:

Princeton, New Jersey, and Manhattan

Date of Birth:

February 18, 1931

Date of Death:

August 5, 2019

Place of Birth:

Lorain, Ohio

Place of Death:

New York

Education:

Howard University, B.A. in English, 1953; Cornell, M.A., 1955

Read an Excerpt

"Foreword

Introduction

1. The American Management Dream

2. No Guts, No Glory

3. Avoiding Deal Hell

4. Find or Create Your Opportunity

5. Strategy for the Business

6. The Deal with the Seller

7. Show Me the Money

8. What’s in It for You?

9. Preparing for the Ground War

10. Riding the Tiger

Appendices: The Buyout Toolkit

Appendix A: Management Term Sheet and Summary of Understanding

Appendix B: Letter of Intent with Seller

Appendix C: Bank Commitment Letter

Appendix D: Confidentiality Agreement

Appendix E: Executive Reference Check Form

Appendix F: Working Group List

Appendix G: Time and Responsibility Schedule

Appendix H: Due Diligence Check List

Appendix I: Directory of Private Equity Investment Firms

Appendix J: Directory of Debt Financing Sources

Appendix K: The Financial Model--A More Detailed Look

Index"

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"""Rickertsen is one of America's most gifted buyout experts. Anyone interested in an inside look at the buyout world and the opportunities for managers in these deals will learn volumes from this book.""

--Jack Kemp, Empower America

""Only insiders know how this stuff works. Rickertsen is an insider. He brings the complexity of high finance to its knees and leaves it begging for mercy. He explains its inner workings so that even a journalist can understand them.""

--Michael Lewis, author of Liar's Poker and The New New Thing "

Editorial Reviews

...[T]his time it is a world without soft lights or shadows, drawn in...bold strokes... (1992)

New York Times Books of the Century

The ordinary spars with the extraordinary in Morrison's books. What would be a classically tragic sensibility, with its implacable move toward crises and the extremes of pity and horror, is altered and illuminated by a thousand smaller, natural occurrences and circumstances. —Ms. Magazine

Margo Jefferson

Perhaps [the novel's] incongruity is an intended paradox, but one backs away from examining it closer. Instead one accepts the characters of Jazz as generalized figures moving rhythmically in the narrator's mind....Jazz. You have to feel it. —The New York Times

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

Morrison's authoritative novel tells the story of three intersecting tragic lives, and adroitly uses the motif of jazz to make palpable the feel and excitement of Harlem in the 1920s.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

What could successfully follow Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling work Beloved? How about Jazz, a lyrical and haunting novel that opens tragically after Joe Trace, a salesman of women's beauty products, has shot his teenage lover Dorcas and his wife Violet has attempted to mutilate the young women's corpse during the funeral? The vision of Morrison's nameless narrator frames this love story, and this anonymous voice slowly draws readers into the rhythm of the city, specifically Harlem, where jazz casts bewitching spells on people's psyches. (Some would call its influence evil.) Readers who have been waiting for Beloved's successor will not be disappointed. Morrison has demonstrated again why she is unequivocally one of the finest contemporary writers in America. -- Faye A. Chadwell, University of South Carolina Library, Columbia

Library Journal

Wonderful. . . . A brilliant, daring novel. . . . Every voice amazes.” —Chicago Tribune

“She may be the last classic American writer, squarely in the tradition of Poe, Melville, Twain and Faulkner.” —Newsweek

“[A] masterpiece. . . . She has moved from strength to strength until she has reached the distinction of being beyond comparison.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Thrillingly written . . . seductive. . . . Some of the finest lyric passages ever written in a modern novel.” —Chicago Sun-Times

“A compelling blend of heart and language. . . . Resounds with passion.” —The Boston Globe

“Marvelous. . . . Morrison is perhaps the finest novelist of our time.” —Vogue

“The author conjures up worlds with complete authority and makes no secret of her angst at the injustices dealt to black women.” —Edna O’Brien, The New York Times Book Review

“She captures that almost indistinguishable mixture of the anxiety and rapture of expectation—that state of desire where sin is just another word for appetite.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“As rich in themes and poetic images as her Pulitzer Prize–winning Beloved. . . . Morrison conjures up the hand of slavery on Harlem’s jazz generation. The more you listen, the more you crave to hear.” —Glamour

“She is the best writer in America. Jazz, for sure; but also Mozart.” —John Leonard, National Public Radio

“A masterpiece. . . . A sensuous, haunting story of various kinds of passion. . . . Mesmerizing.” —Cosmopolitan

“Lyrically brooding. . . . One accepts the characters of Jazz as generalized figures moving rhythmically in the narrator’s mind.” —The New York Times

“Transforms a familiar refrain of jilted love into a bold, sustaining time of self-knowledge and discovery. Its rhythms are infectious.” —People

From the Publisher

A welcome addition to unabridged recordings is this reading of new Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison’s latest book, an evocation of black urban life in the early twentieth century. Excellent narration by actress Lynne Thigpen enhances the story of Joe and Violet Trace, the people whose lives they touch, and the people who touch their lives. The rhythms of the language match the rhythms of the age, with jazz riffs punctuating the story of loss and redemption. The narrator ably translates the riffs into speech, which adds to the production. While not all can read print and hear its music, most can hear music in an aural work. In some ways, this makes an audio presentation that much more enjoyable. E.F. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine

MAR 94 - AudioFile