UCC College Novel Workshop
JAZZ: READING NOTES I & 2
Created by Dr. John Russell
CHAPTER ONE
In this first section the narrator, who does not provide us with his/her name (sign, designation), gives us some basic information about two of the three principal characters, Joe Trace and his wife Violet (who is fifty), while alluding to a third principal character, an eighteen-year old girl with whom Joe was having an affair and whom he has killed. Note that at the end of this section the narrator mentions a second "scandalizing threesome" and a second murder that "turned out different."
The narrator digresses, describing the City and providing hints about him/herself. What two precautions does the narrator take, and why does the narrator not "come out more" and "mix"?
The narrator returns to the present and to the photo on the mantelpiece. The eighteen-year-old is named (designated) by the narrator, and her face characterized in very different complementary?) terms by Violet and by Joe. The narrator also talks about Violet's preoccupation with the murdered girl, her inability to rest, and her "cracks, " one of which the narrator spends much of the remaining chapter describing: the extraordinary theft that Violet has committed. What details, two especially, does the narrator emphasize while describing this theft?
And note that very briefly (p.17) the narrator manages to mention three other characters-True Belle, Miss Vera Louise, and a "blond boy" with "carefully loved hair-one of whom will become very important in the second half of the story.
CHAPTER TWO
The narrator now turns to Joe, and to Joe's motives. (And how could the narrator have learned of Joe's motives?) Joe minds Dorcas' death, but what does he mind more? And what propelled him into his relationship with Dorcas?
The narrator, for the first time, begins to delve into the past lives of Joe and of Violet, and while doing so eloquently describes the attraction the City had for the "black people running from want and violence" in the 1870s, 80s, 90s, and into the new century. Joe, from the country, has come to love "the way a person is in the City." This "way" does little to stimulate love, "but it does pump desire," and twenty years after he and Violet first arrived, Joe finds himself once again propelled by desire. And he tells "his new love things he had never told his wife," one thing especially that, in a remarkable passage, the narrator describes in detail. What? And what equally important thing does Dorcas tell him?
The narrator gives a brief sketch of Malvonne, the woman whose apartment Joe used on the sly for his affair, and ends this chapter with a discourse on the curious erotic centrality of Thursday: "for satisfaction pure and deep...Thursday can't be beat. " But what happens twenty-four hours later, and what character does the weekend then take on?
CHAPTER THREE
The narrator now speaks at length of the music that gives its name to the narrative. But it's not the narrator's response to the music that we hear tell of, but the responses first of Alice Manfred and then of her niece, Dorcas. Alice's response to the music is complicated, and made more complicated by her association of jazz to another music she heard on Fifth Avenue in July 1917. What music was that and why does it have such importance for her? And what two powerful forces does she hear in the music that so pervades her world?
Dorcas' response is simpler and maybe even more powerful because of its simplicity. What is that response and what is its origin? In other words, what is "Paradise" for Dorcas?
The narrator describes the circumstances of Dorcas' and Joe's first meeting, and then returns to Alice Manfred and to the curious relationship that she and Violet Trace develop after Dorcas' funeral. In the conversation that the two women have that ends this section, Violet identifies the enemy and, tacitly, Alice agrees with her. Who, in the lives of these two women, has been the enemy?
CHAPTER FOUR
The narrator now makes the first of four journeys, in four successive chapters, into the past, seeking to illuminate the deep motives of three of our principal characters. This chapter begins in the narrative present with Violet sipping a milkshake and ends in the narrative present with Violet finishing that milkshake, having just recollected another of her conversations with Alice Manfred.
In between the beginning and the end is a journey into Violet's past, focusing especially on a five-year period from 1888, when True Belle returns to take care of her grandchildren, to 1893, when Violet marries Joe Trace. The voice of the narrator begins this story but, in a long paragraph (93-97), the voice of the narrator becomes the voice of Violet, who tells us of the night in 1892 when she first met Joe. This paragraph ends with a series of questions that Violet poses to herself, and to which she gives a remarkable series of answers. What are those questions, and how does she answer them?
CHAPTER FIVE
The narrator begins by describing the transition from winter to spring in the City, soon focusing on one particular spring in the City, the spring of 1926, on one particular street in the City, Lenox Avenue, and on one particular man in the City, Joe Trace. "I know him so well," the narrator tells us. How could the narrator have come by such knowledge? And how does the narrator "imagine him"?
And now the narrator's voice steps offstage and onstage comes another voice, that of Joe himself. Joe tells us first about his initial contacts with Dorcas and then about his seven changes. What was the origin of Joe's last name? Speaking of his second change, Joe tells us of being picked "by the best man in Vesper County to go hunting with. Talk about proud-making." This man, a "hunter's hunter," taught Joe two lessons. What were they? Finally, though, Joe admits that all seven changes had not prepared him for Dorcas.
Joe finishes this brief rendition of his life by telling us of the last five days of his relationship with Dorcas. He begins by emphasizing a particular feature of her appearance. What feature and why does he put such an emphasis on it? Joe finishes by flashing back to his first October days with Dorcas, days of Eden and of Adam and the apple. When Adam "left Eden, he left a rich man." Why?
CHAPTER SIX
The narrator, so the narrator tells us, is "curious, inventive and well-informed," as if we haven't figured that out for ourselves already. But inventive in what way, exactly? And from what source or sources has this voice gotten the information that it is using to tell the story? The narrator now plunges some seventy years back into the past to tell us about True Belle, her "whitelady" Vera Louise Gray, and Vera's son Golden Gray. Vera Louise, originally from Vesper County, Virginia, had come to Baltimore with True Belle, her servant, and an "orphan" boy, Golden, so named because of his unusual skin color. We soon learn from our well-informed narrator that Golden is Vera Louise's illegitimate mulatto child and that she lived in Baltimore in exile from the Virginia family who had disowned her. True Belle lived in Baltimore with her and the boy for over thirty years before returning to Vesper County to take care of her daughter and grandchildren. But before she left Vera Louise, the Golden Boy had, at eighteen, already left. To do what? And what was the year of his journey? On his way whom does he meet and what, after the accident, does he do? Once at the cabin of Henry LesTroy, Golden Gray arranges himself to wait, and the narrator backtracks to the point when "he stopped the buggy, got out to tie the horse and walk back through the rain..." Golden Gray, at the moment he first saw the woman, had experienced a vision. Of what did that vision consist?
A boy arrives who confirms that Golden has indeed found the house of Henry. What happens when Golden lays out his clothes, and why? And now the narrator speaks: "How could I have imagined him so poorly?" What had the narrator failed to notice about Golden Gray? "1 have to alter things, " the narrator says. What now does the narrator intend to do for Golden Gray?
Golden and the boy tend to the woman unconscious under the green dress. What does Golden think "he was ready for"?
CHAPTER SEVEN
Thirteen years have passed since Golden Gray's visit to Henry, and one day, while cutting cane, Hunters Hunter feels the tap of fingers on his shoulder: Wild. The narrator brings us back now to the day Henry walked into his house to find there a golden-haired young man and a pregnant girl. Golden tells Henry his name. "Can't say i t don't suit," Henry replies. What does Golden say? Hunter has no intention of taking any "whiteboy sass" from his newly arrived son, and Golden resolves "to blow the man's head off. Tomorrow." What changes his mind?
Thirteen years later Joe Trace makes the second of "three solitary journeys" in search of his mother. It was Hunter one evening who gave him the crucial information. And Hunter also tells Joe (and Victory) that he has "taught both you all"-what? When Joe makes his second attempt, he believes he has succeeded. What sign does he ask his quarry to make? When his quarry doesn't make it, how does he respond?
And now, after this long journey into the past, the narrator returns to the present, specifically to "an icy day in January;" 1926, the day that Joe is hunting Dorcas. Why did Joe say, over twenty years previously, "All right, Violet, I' ll marry you"?
The narrator now shifts very quickly between present and past, between Joe's hunt on this icy day in 1926 and another hunt that Joe, already married, had set out on in the 1890s. What does Joe expect Dorcas to be, and not to be, .when he tracks her down on this New Year's Day? And what does he find, and where does he find himself, at the end of that earlier hunt?
And in case you haven't noticed, this long excursion into the past has enabled us to partially solve one of our three mysteries, the mystery of Joe's parents, and has given us crucial information that will help us solve the second mystery, the mystery of the narrator's identity.
And has it helped us solve that third mystery...?
CHAPTER EIGHT
"Where is she?" Joe asked at the end of the last chapter.
"There she is," the narrator tells us at the beginning of this chapter, dancing at a party on New Year's Day, 1926.
After the narrator tells us why Dorcas "is as happy as she has ever been anytime," Dorcas herself, in her own voice, tells us why. What is she getting now with Acton that she never got with Joe?
The narrator occasionally interrupts Dorcas' monologue. How does the narrator characterize this party?
Joe turns up and Dorcas speaks her last words. What words does she know by heart?
CHAPTER NINE
The narrator begins by describing a spring day of pure "sweetheart" weather, weather that prompts young men to climb to the rooftops and play their music. We learned in Chapter Three that for Dorcas the jazz expressed erotic desire and the promise of its fulfillment: Paradise. For her aunt, the jazz expressed the anger of desire frustrated and unfulfilled. But now the narrator tells us that the music coming from the rooftops of Harlem expressed something wholly other, something in harmony with the pure sweetheart weather of spring. What?
And now Felice, who makes the narrator "nervous," takes over the story. After a brief description of her parents and her upbringing, Felice talks about her relationship r with Joe and Violet (remember that in the first chapter the narrator mentioned a second "scandalizing threesome"). Felice first visits Joe and Violet to retrieve her ring. They do not have it-it was buried with Dorcas but they invite her back and she accepts.
They talk to Felice about Dorcas, of course, and also about themselves. Talking to Felice, Violet claims that she messed up her life. How? Talking to Joe, Felice tells him about Dorcas' last words. What were those words and what do they mean? Felice's final reference to Dorcas concerns Dorcas' attitude to Acton. "I guess that's the way you have to think about it," she says. About what? And will she?
And yes, there is a second murder. Who kills whom and with what result?
CHAPTER TEN
Pain ended the last chapter and pain begins this one. "I seem to have an affection, a kind of sweet tooth for it," the narrator tells us. The narrator then confesses to having "missed the obvious" about the characters. For example, what was Joe really looking for "while he was running through the streets in bad weather" looking for Dorcas?
The narrator finishes by offering us a few glimpses of Joe and Violet's secret, undercover love and of their public love, and admits to being envious of their public love, having experienced only a secret love. With whom?
And thus the mystery of the narrator's identity is solved (if you still are uncertain, follow the narrator's final instructions exactly).
And that last mystery, .the mystery of love? Has this Voice, this "sign of the letter," this "designation of the division," helped us to solve it? As this Voice itself has said, "Good luck and let me know."