MORRISON (Toni).
Jazz.
First edition by the Nobel Prize winning author.
Jazz is the second in what was planned as a three part series of novels centred around women who “sabotaged themselves “displaced” themselves for people they loved”, the first in the trilogy being Beloved.
When writing Jazz, Morrison kept in mind a story she had read in James Van der Zee’s The Harlem Book of the Dead: “According to the photographer, the girl had slumped to the floor at a party. When people around her asked what happened, she would only say ‘I’ll tell you tomorrow.’ The girl died, apparently shot by a jealous lover who had entered the party with a gun and a silencer. Of course the girl knew this, but she kept her story until her lover could escape.” In Jazz, Dorcas Manfred embodies Morrison’s curiosity about this young woman “who sacrifices herself to save her lover by refusing to name him as her murderer”.
A fine copy.
