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Jazz
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Jump down to see edition details for: Hardcover | Paperback | Cassette/Spoken Word | Reinforced | Prebinding
Bibliographic Detail
Publisher Random House
Publication date April 1, 1992
Binding Cassette/Spoken Word
Book category Adult Fiction
ISBN-13 9780679411932
ISBN-10 0679411933
Dimensions 0.75 by 4.50 by 7.25 in.
Weight 0.30 lbs.
Availability§ Publisher Out of Stock Indefinitely
Original list price $16.00
Other format details audio
§As reported by publisher
Summaries and Reviews
Summary
In 1926 Harlem, fiftyish salesman Joe Trace murders his teenaged lover, whom his hairdresser wife, Violet, then tries to disfigure at the funeral. Read by Toni Morrison. Simultaneous.
Amazon.com description: Product Description: 2 casettes / 3 hours
Read by Toni Morrison

From the author of Paraidse and Beloved, Jazz, is spellbinding for the haunting passion of its profound love story, and for the bittersweet lyricism and refined sensuality of its powerful and elegant style.

"Morrison's remarkable talent for storytelling naturally lends itself to the spoken word."
- The Arizona Republic

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.

Jazz is an unprecedented and astonishing invention, a landmark on the American literary landscape--a novel unforgettable and for all time.


Editions
Hardcover
Book cover for 9780679411673 Book cover for 9780816156245
 
Large print edition from G K Hall & Co (May 1, 1993)
9780816156245 | details & prices | 315 pages | 6.50 × 9.50 × 0.50 in. | 1.35 lbs | List price $22.95
About: In the afterglow of a clean triumph--her widely celebrated, Pulitzer Prize-winning best-seller, "Beloved" --Toni Morrison moves to even higher ground.
from Alfred a Knopf Inc (April 1, 1992)
9780679411673 | details & prices | 6.00 × 8.50 × 1.00 in. | 1.10 lbs | List price $28.95
About: In a love story set in 1926 Harlem, fiftyish door-to-door salesman Joe Trace murders his teenaged lover, whom his hairdresser wife, Violet, then tries to disfigure at the funeral
Paperback
Book cover for 9780451177803 Book cover for 9780452269651 Book cover for 9780517112557 Book cover for 9780517137642 Book cover for 9781400076215 Book cover for 9788440656964
 
Reprint edition from Vintage Books (June 1, 2004)
9781400076215 | details & prices | 229 pages | 5.25 × 8.00 × 0.75 in. | 0.60 lbs | List price $15.95
About: Set in Harlem during the 1920s, this novel chronicles a bittersweet triangle involving Joe Trace, a middle-aged door-to-door salesman, his mentally unstable wife Violet, and his eighteen-year-old girlfriend.
from Ediciones B (March 1, 1995)
9788440656964 | details & prices | 4.50 × 7.00 × 1.00 in. | 0.45 lbs | List price $6.95
from Random House Value Pub (January 1, 1995)
9780517137642 | details & prices | List price $5.99
About: In the afterglow of a clean triumph--her widely celebrated, Pulitzer Prize-winning best-seller, Beloved--Toni Morrison moves to even higher ground.
Braille edition from William a Thomas Braille (April 1, 1994)
9781569565490 | details & prices | 11.75 × 11.50 × 2.25 in. | 2.75 lbs | List price $26.08
With Sam Nienow | from New Amer Library (October 1, 1993)
9780451177803 | details & prices | 4.50 × 7.00 × 0.75 in. | 0.30 lbs | List price $5.99
This edition also contains A Guy's Guide to College
Reprint edition from Plume (April 1, 1993)
9780452269651 | details & prices | 5.50 × 8.00 × 0.75 in. | 0.45 lbs | List price $12.95
About: Set in Harlem in the 1920s, this novel chronicles a bittersweet triangle involving a middle-aged door-to-door salesman, his mentally unstable wife, and his eighteen-year-old girlfriend
from Random House Value Pub (March 1, 1992)
9780517112557 | details & prices | List price $5.99
Cassette/Spoken Word
Book cover for 9780679411932
 
The price comparison is for this edition
from Random House (April 1, 1992)
9780679411932 | details & prices | 4.50 × 7.25 × 0.75 in. | 0.30 lbs | List price $16.00
About: In a love story set in 1926 Harlem, fiftyish door-to-door salesman Joe Trace murders his teenaged lover, whom his hairdresser wife, Violet, then tries to disfigure at the funeral.
Reinforced
Book cover for 9780606191968
 
from Demco Media (February 1, 2002)
9780606191968 | details & prices | 5.50 × 8.00 × 1.00 in. | 0.60 lbs | List price $21.84
About: Set in Harlem in the 1920s, this novel chronicles a bittersweet triangle involving a middle-aged door-to-door salesman, his mentally unstable wife, and his eighteen-year-old girlfriend
Prebinding
Book cover for 9780785719854 Book cover for 9781435242401
 
Reprint edition from Paw Prints (April 18, 2008)
9781435242401 | details & prices | 229 pages | 5.25 × 8.00 × 1.00 in. | 0.74 lbs | List price $22.00
from Turtleback Books (October 1, 1999)
9780785719854 | details & prices | 5.50 × 8.25 × 1.00 in. | 0.65 lbs | List price $22.40
About: Set in Harlem in the 1920s, this novel chronicles a bittersweet triangle involving a middle-aged door-to-door salesman, his mentally unstable wife, and his eighteen-year-old girlfriend

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