An edition of Jazz (1992)

Jazz

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  • 3.3 (6 ratings) ·
  • 138 Want to read
  • 14 Currently reading
  • 14 Have read

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Last edited by AgentSapphire
May 10, 2023 | History
An edition of Jazz (1992)

Jazz

  • 3.3 (6 ratings) ·
  • 138 Want to read
  • 14 Currently reading
  • 14 Have read

It is winter, barely three days into 1926, seven years after Armistice; we are in the scintillating City, around Lenox Avenue, "when all the wars are over and there will never be another one... At last, at last, everything's ahead... Here comes the new. Look out. There goes the sad stuff. The bad stuff. The things-nobody-could-help stuff." But amid the euphoric decisiveness, a tragedy ensues among people who had train-danced into the City, from points south and west, in search of promise.

Joe Trace--in his fifties, door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, erstwhile devoted husband--shoots to death his lover of three months, impetuous, eighteen-year-old Dorcas ("Everything was like a picture show to her"). At the funeral, his determined, hard-working wife, Violet, herself a hairdresser--who is given to stumbling into dark mental cracks, and who talks mostly to birds--tries with a knife to disfigure the corpse.

In a dazzling act of jazz-like improvisation, moving seamlessly in and out of past, present, and future, a mysterious voice--whose identity is a matter of each reader's imagination--weaves this brilliant fiction, at the same time showing how its blues are informed by the brutal exigencies of slavery. Richly combining history, legend, reminiscence, this voice captures as never before the ineffable mood, the complex humanity, of black urban life at a moment in our century we assumed we understood.

Publish Date
Language
French
Pages
248

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: Jazz
Jazz
Jul 09, 2012, AWB
paperback in English
Cover of: Jazz
Jazz: a novel
2004, Vintage International, Vintage Books
in English - 1st Vintage International ed.
Cover of: Jazz
Jazz
March 30, 1995, Editions Flammarion
Mass Market Paperback in French
Cover of: Jazz
Jazz
1993-04, Plume
in English
Cover of: Jazz
Jazz
1993-04, Plume
in English
Cover of: Jazz
Jazz
1993, Plume Books
in English
Cover of: Jazz
Jazz
1993-04, Plume
in English
Cover of: Jazz
Jazz
1993, Ediciones B
in English - 1a ed.
Cover of: Jazz
Jazz
1992, Alfred A. Knopf
in English
Cover of: Jazz
Jazz
1992, Plume Books
in English
Cover of: Jazz
Jazz
1992, Knopf, Distributed by Random House
in English - 1st trade ed.

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Book Details


First Sentence

"Sth, I know that woman."

The Physical Object

Format
Mass Market Paperback
Number of pages
248
Dimensions
6.8 x 4.2 x 0.7 inches
Weight
5.6 ounces

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL8889272M
ISBN 10
2264020741
ISBN 13
9782264020741
Library Thing
11833
Goodreads
1031608

Source records

amazon.com record

Links outside Open Library

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History

Download catalog record: RDF / JSON / OPDS | Wikipedia citation
May 10, 2023 Edited by AgentSapphire merge authors
September 29, 2012 Edited by Apples merge authors
August 10, 2010 Edited by IdentifierBot added LibraryThing ID
April 24, 2010 Edited by Open Library Bot Fixed duplicate goodreads IDs.
April 30, 2008 Created by an anonymous user Imported from amazon.com record