Jazz

So, according to Wikipedia Jazz is the second book in a trilogy about African American history.  I was unaware of this, but luckily Beloved is meant to be the first book in said trilogy and I've read that.  It seems to be one of those trilogies more linked by theme and ideas rather than actual plot too, so it seems that I lucked out a little.  I wasn't that keen on Beloved, but I liked Jazz better.  It's maybe an easier read, it's certainly got a clearer cut narrative and, over Christmas (yes, this is still part of the Christmas reading) that's what you want.  It's no fun to overtax your brain when you're over indulging in your parents' very good wine.

Simply put, it's the story of Joe and Violet Trace.  The pair are both fifty and the love has gone out of their marriage; Violet is childless and unfulfilled and Joe is restless.  This restlessness morphs into an affair with an 18 year-old whom he eventually murders because he loves her.  Apparently the best way to show love is with a shot gun- start your Valentine's preparations early, folk.  All of this actually happens before the book starts, but it jumps around a whole bunch, switching its point in time and narrator every chapter.  I think the only consistency is that life is pretty bleak for pretty much everyone.  Not all the time, of course, there's an undeniable warmth to the book, but there are a lot of depressing bits in there too.  Take Dorcas, for example.  Not only is she the murdered teenager who kicks off the entire story, both her parents die violently- her father is "stomped to death" for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and her mother burns to death in a house fire the fire brigade have no interest in extinguishing.  

There's a healthy dose of feminism in Jazz too.  Or rather, the acceptance of the necessity of feminism.  Women are frequently shown as victims, not just Dorcas.   Once she is murdered, Dorcas's aunt focuses on newspapers and begins to recognise patterns of black women being victims but there is no solution offered.  Dorcas's aunt believes that any smart black woman arms herself so she is not defenseless and it is only those who fail to do so who fall into victimhood.  Similarly, when she discovers Joe's affair, Violet blames Dorcas rather than Joe.  There's a community of women which appears strong until it is tested by a man who is desired by more than one of the women.  Joe is almost entirely blameless, both for his affair and the crime he commits.  He is not even arrested for shooting Dorcas, even though it is common knowledge that he did it.   Admittedly, this is also partially linked to the racism of the police. 

This is another of those books that make me realise how ignorant I am about some things.  My knowledge of black American history runs along the lines of: slavery- Civil War- segregation- Martin Luther King- equality (but not really, let's be honest).  As you can see, there are a lot of gaps.  It's stuff like the role played by African-American troops in World War One and the way their treatment when they returned home led to riots that you're just not taught about in British schools.  I think we stopped studying American history at around the point the West was conquered; around the time that us Brits were still (sort of) the good guys.

Basically, this is a good book but I'm not sure what to write about it.  When I read books now I've started folding down the corners of pages I want to come back to when I blog (I know this is basically a cardinal sin, but it's cheaper than Post-Its).  Anyway, the copy I read was a cheap one I got off the internet second-hand and full of someone else's A-level notes.  I assume they were A-level notes- if they were degree ones, someone's definitely failed their degree.  It's so distracting to have someone else's opinion pushing into the book and a lot of the stuff I ended up bookmarking was the same as theirs.  So I'm just not sure if I've been going back and looking at the interesting bits, or I just got influenced by hastily scrawled notes about crap. 

My next read and last of the books to read over Xmas is Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  It looks a bit more serious than the Disney version.