Review: Jazz by Toni Morrison (1993)

These are the books I am terrified to review. Mostly because the intellectual theses on them out there are terrifying for ordinary readers. What more can I say after endless pages on the narrative styles and the emphasis of blues music on the storyline?

Well, I can add, with every other reader, how incredibly beautiful the book is. How beautifully the sentences just blend into each other. Sometimes you just gasp at the sheer audacity of phrases, words which never should have belonged together forming such terribly beautiful ideas. Then there is here deep insight into human nature, and her strong, abiding faith in love. Just the first paragraph is an auditory pleasure enough to make this book a classic.

Then there is the question of an unpunished murderer to whose woes we are introduced. While none of the characters here appear sympathetic, and law could not have been very sympathetic with the African American race ( an understatement if there ever was one), to just let a murderer roam free when there are witnesses is bordering on the absurd.

But then here is your narrator, the book itself, slowly letting you discover it, through a tale slowly unravelling and letting you fall in love with it and falling in love with you. And you are left by a book which tells you at the end that it loves you and your head scream "Meta!!!" and your eyes look confused, but in your brain, you know the book is just a shy lover and it is the end and it does not want to let you go not knowing.

And however distressed you might have been, at the end you leave something soulfully beautiful telling you words which will haunt you pages after you have shut the book.

"That I have loved only you, surrendered my whole self reckless to you and nobody else. That I want you to love me back and show it to me. That I love the way you hold me, how close you let me be to you. I like your fingers on and on, lifting, turning. I have watched your face for a long time now, and missed your eyes when you went away from me. Talking to you and hearing you answer- that's the kick."

Because do look when you are reading. And look where your hands are.

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This book satisfies the following challenges:

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
Back To The Classics 2013- A Classic that relates to the African-American Experience

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die - A Lifelong Challenge

Aha! A commitment for life. That should definitely not be a cause for panic. Anyway, the goal of this challenge is to finish the 1001 books to read before you die list, which is actually some 1300 books long, so death, wherever you are, please approach as slowly as you can.

I have finished some 53 books in the series, which is not very impressive since it is merely 4.06% (see what I meant by reading like an accountant). However, now there is a list (wherein I shall avoid anything as disturbing as 120 days of Sodom, so take that, 4.06%) and that should serve as both an incentive and a guide.

I shall be using this post as a sort of a Master Post, which will also have links to any reviews I may write. The books I have already read does not contain many reviews since I am a notoriously lazy blogger.

This is where the carrot hangs now:

The books I have completed till now are:

1. Aesop's Fables - Aesop (c.4th BC)
2. The Thousand and One Nights- Anonymous (c. 850)
3. Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe (1719)
4. Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift (1726)
5. Sense And Sensibility - Jane Austen (1811)
6. Pride And Prejudice - Jane Austen (1813)
7. Mansfield Park - Jane Austen (1814)
8. Emma - Jane Austen (1816)
9. Persuasion - Jane Austen (1818)
10. Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen (1818)
11. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (1838)
12. The Fall Of The House of Usher - Edgar Allan Poe (1839)
13. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (1843)
14. The Count Of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (1845-6)
15. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (1847)
16. Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852)
17. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (1859)
18. The Mill On The Floss - George Eliot (1860)
19. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (1865)
20. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott (1868)
21. Through The Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll (1871)
22. Around The World In Eighty Days - Jules Verne (1873)
23. Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)
24. King Solomon's Mines - H Rider Haggard (1885)
25. She - H Rider Haggard (1887)
26. The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1892)
27. Diary Of A Nobody - George & Weedon Grossmith (1892)
28. The Invisible Man - H G Wells (1897)
29. The Hound Of The Baskervilles - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1902)
30. Call Of The Wild - Jack London (1903)
31. The Thirty-Nine Steps - John Buchan (1915)
32. Siddhartha - Herman Hesse (1922)
33. The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie (1926)
34. Murder Must Advertise - Dorothy L Sayers (1933)
35. Thank You, Jeeves - P G Wodehouse (1934)
36. The Nine Tailors - Dorothy L Sayers (1934)
37. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (1936)
38. The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1943)
39. Animal Farm - George Orwell (1945)
40. The Old Man And The Sea - Ernest Hemingway (1952)
41. Breakfast At Tiffany's - Truman Capote (1958)
42. To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee (1960)
43. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968)
44. The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams (1979)
45. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie (1980)
46. The Unbearable Lightness Of Being - Milan Kundera (1984)
47. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1985)
48. Watchmen - Alan Moore & David Gibbons (1986)
49. The Great Indian Novel - Shashi Tharoor (1990)
50. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth (1993)
51. Jazz- Toni Morrison (1993)
52. Life of Pi - Yann Martel (2001)
53. Atonement- Ian McEwan (2001)
54. Kafka On The Shore - Haruki Murakami (2002)
55.  The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri (2003)
56. The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time - Mark Haddon (2003)

Well, here is to a lifetime of reading! Onwards and what ho!