(no subject)
25) Toni Morrison's Jazz, which... I think it's probably the most pleasurable and satisfying reading experience I've had to this point on 50books_POC, which makes it an appropriate halfway marker.
I made myself a playlist of 1920s Jazz- Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Bessie Smith... and listened to it on shuffle on my iPod while reading. And the combination of the incredible music and Morrison's unbelievably vivid language was special. I was transported, transported to Morrison's storybook Harlem. I walked in those streets, waved to the people, made myself comfortable on a street bench watching the cars go by. I was in the speakeasies, in the hair salons, in the tenements. Wow.
I’m crazy about this City.
Daylight slants like a razor cutting the buildings in half. In the top half I see looking faces and it’s not easy to tell which are people, which the work of stonemasons. Below is shadow where any blasé thing takes place: clarinets and lovemaking, fists and the voices of sorrowful women.
Wow. The storytelling bounces back and forth like a jazz song, themes popping in and out, up and down, bopped from player to player, each time they resurface looking entirely different.
And then the ending, which I shall not spoil, but is probably the subtlest surprise ending I've ever read. The misdirection the narrator(s) employ, or perhaps don't employ but are themselves suckered in by, are just... wow. I don't even know what to say but wow.
I made myself a playlist of 1920s Jazz- Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Bessie Smith... and listened to it on shuffle on my iPod while reading. And the combination of the incredible music and Morrison's unbelievably vivid language was special. I was transported, transported to Morrison's storybook Harlem. I walked in those streets, waved to the people, made myself comfortable on a street bench watching the cars go by. I was in the speakeasies, in the hair salons, in the tenements. Wow.
I’m crazy about this City.
Daylight slants like a razor cutting the buildings in half. In the top half I see looking faces and it’s not easy to tell which are people, which the work of stonemasons. Below is shadow where any blasé thing takes place: clarinets and lovemaking, fists and the voices of sorrowful women.
Wow. The storytelling bounces back and forth like a jazz song, themes popping in and out, up and down, bopped from player to player, each time they resurface looking entirely different.
And then the ending, which I shall not spoil, but is probably the subtlest surprise ending I've ever read. The misdirection the narrator(s) employ, or perhaps don't employ but are themselves suckered in by, are just... wow. I don't even know what to say but wow.