Ep. 338 Jazz by Toni Morrison — The Stacks Book Club (Eve Dunbar)

Written By Megan Caballero

It’s The Stacks Book Club Day, and we’re discussing Jazz by Toni Morrison. Professor Eve Dunbar joins us to explore the lives of Joe and Violet Trace, as their relationship is tested by love, betrayal, and violence in 1920s Harlem. In today's discussion, we dive into the significance of the book’s title and how it informs the novel’s improvisational style. We also examine Morrison’s relationship with her characters, the power of naming, and her exploration of closeness through violence.

There are spoilers on today's episode.

Be sure to listen to the end of today’s episode to find out what our October book club pick will be.

 
 

Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon.

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TRANSCRIPT
*Due to the nature of podcast advertising, these timestamps are not 100% accurate and will vary.

Traci Thomas 0:09

Welcome to the stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I'm your host, Traci Thomas, and it is the Stax book club day. Toni Morrison month edition. We are diving into jazz by Toni Morrison with our returning guest professor, Eve Dunbar, set in 1920s Harlem Morrison's novel intricately weaves together the lives of Joe and violet trace as their tumultuous relationship is tested by secrets, betrayal and a haunting past. Today, Eve and I discuss the form and function of this novel, The naming of characters and what makes Toni Morrison so dang good. There are spoilers on today's episode, and be sure to listen all the way to the end to find out what our October book club pick will be. Quick reminder, everything we talk about on each episode of the stacks can be found in the link in the show notes. If you love this show and you want inside access to it, head to patreon.com/the stacks and join the stacks pack. I cannot make this show without the support of the stacks pack. And for just $5 a month, you get to be part of that community. You get to be on the discord. You get to get bonus monthly episodes. You get to come to our virtual book club meetups. You get to know that by joining the show, you make it possible for me to make the show, and you get this fun little perk, which is shout outs on the podcast. So here's a huge thank you to some of our newest members of the stacks, Jessica brandial, Sarah Lyle, Maya Schechter, Jacqueline, Tricia manginello, Amanda Seeley, Anne bonley And Megan. Thank you all so so much. Also, if you're less interested in being part of a bookish community, but you still want to support the work of the show, might I suggest you head over to Traci thomas.substack.com to subscribe to my newsletter called unstacked. It'll go directly into your email inbox. You will get my hot takes, my opinions. Keep up with all the events I've got coming, and of course, you will be helping to support the show. Again, that's Traci thomas.substack.com Okay, now it is time for my conversation with Eve Dunbar about Toni Morrison's novel jazz music.

All right, everybody. It is the stacks book club day. I am really excited. It is Toni Morrison month. We are talking about jazz, and we are joined again by author, professor, generally, crowd pleasing. Favorite guest, Eve, Dunbar Eve. Welcome back. Thank

Eve Dunbar 2:41

you. I'm excited.

Traci Thomas 2:42

The people love you, Eve. I knew they would. I was as we were recording. I was like, Oh, this is, this is really good. So no pressure, no pressure. Okay, before we dive into the actual book, let me tell folks. Let me do like, a quick sort of synopsis, though, this one is, it's a hard one to synopsis, so we're gonna do it kind of short. It's about a couple, Joe and violet, living in New York City in the 1920s 1920s and they have moved from the south. They're in their 50s, and Joe, at the start of the book, has taken a lover who he has also murdered, and Violet has gone to the funeral to slash the face of this young, 18 year old woman, girl whose name is Dorcas. And then the book sort of zooms out and in, taking us to their past and moving forward in the future. And that's really the synopsis, yeah, I think I think so. Yeah, it's like about people in their lives. Okay, we always start here. First of all, how many times have you read this book, approximately, and what do you generally think of it?

Eve Dunbar 3:55

Um, I've probably read it at least five or six times at this point. Well, I'm a terrible memory. So which is great for Morrison, because every time you read Morrison, one, you're a different person. We talked a little bit about that last time. And two, you can't every sentence is so full you never get it completely. So it's, she's just a great author for kind of going back to and being like, oh, did that happen? Or I don't remember this thing. So, yeah, it's always like the first time in some ways. And

Traci Thomas 4:43

what do you think of jazz generally? I big thoughts.

Eve Dunbar 4:47

It's one of my favorites, only because, you know, I think about it in light of what she's trying to do in. Thinking about, I mean, for us, they would be myth people living in the middle of their lives, right, and having lived through segregation, or in the midst of segregation, grown up in a period post emancipation, right? What does that mean? What? How do you build a life when your life had been so constricted for the first part? And what does it mean to sort of come into your freedom at 50, you know, in the middle of your life? What kinds of disappointments, what kinds of like beauty is there? So I really like that element that she's really thinking about always, she's always thinking about freedom, but thinking about, like, what does freedom feel like when you're not a kid and you're on the second act? Yeah? Yeah.

Traci Thomas 5:55

I hadn't really thought about it sort of being I had thought about it being framed as, like, post emancipation, but I hadn't really thought about also the idea of freedom, and specifically being like in the Harlem Renaissance for that freedom, right? Like, that's like, a very specific time and place to be exploring that as well.

Eve Dunbar 6:11

Yeah, I think that that's really important, because the way we understand the Harlem Renaissance as this period for, you know, so much is happening for black people across the country, not just in Harlem, but like, Yeah, this is a moment historically where a lot of black people are moving in ways they've never moved right up from the south during that great migration, and just kind of thinking freedom looks like one thing, because segregation has felt like com, like oppression, like absolutely oppressive, and moving to these spaces where you think you're going to have this completely different experience, and it is very different, but really trying to navigate. What does that even mean for me as a black person, and so the Renaissance is like just this great moment to set the book in for me,

Traci Thomas 7:10

yeah? Okay, I'm gonna be honest with you, yeah, yeah, the book, I struggled. This was hard. This was really hard for me, yes, so I will tell you what I loved, okay, because there was a lot, there was a lot that I loved. And I think what I struggled with is not actually a criticism of the book. It was a challenge of the book. So, like, there's nothing that I didn't like, but what I loved, I love her dialog. I love her scenes. She gives you the juiciest scenes ever, like the scene between Hunter's Hunter and golden gray. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? That scene is like, Oh my God, and like, the dialog is so good. So I loved that. I felt like I could see the work and the craft a lot in this book. Like I could see that she was trying to make the writing feel like jazz music in the ways that, like we see these scenes, and then she sort of remixes them in the same chapter and goes back and comes like, I felt like I could see the idea of this book very clearly as a reader, which I was excited by. I was like, Oh, I see what she's doing here. Where I struggled is I felt really unmoored by the plot, like, I sort of was like, What is, what is this book? Like? I don't know what I read like, I don't know where I'm supposed to feel like, by the end, I was like, I don't even know what ha what's happened here. I have, like, I felt very like, What? What? Right, almost like, yeah, like it was almost like I had read a collection of short stories that were interconnected. But by the end, it sort of was like, well, the connections, like, I don't know, it just felt like it fell apart for me at the end. And I don't know what happened? I don't

Eve Dunbar 9:03

know if I can answer that necessarily, but what I can say is that you sort of already described it when you said it. You can see the riff that she's doing on jazz, right? So what you're describing, I think, is what happens with jazz, right? Everybody comes to the table and they know, this is, this is a this is we're going to play a song together, or, in this case, we're going to read a book together. This we're going to be in a book, right? If, if we go from the character's perspective, and what she allows is, okay, here's the book, and the book is talking to us, right? The book is the thing. And I'm not going to necessarily follow a linear narrative, right? We have a beginning, we have an end, and everything that happens in the middle is jazz. Everything, right? Like there's no people are playing similar notes. But. Going to play them differently. And I think if you kind of enter the book with whatever your understanding of jazz music is, I think that your expectation that you're going to get this thing that feels good or this thing that you can completely contain, you can let go of that, right, and instead experience all of these different threads for what they are, and get to the end and sort of watch these two care violet and Joe, pull the world up with their covers, and feel like, okay, I've done something. I might not have liked every note, or I might not have liked every line, but like, everything together has created something really particular. I don't know if that's, yeah,

Traci Thomas 10:47

that's sort of how I felt. Like, I sort of felt like, uh, like, like, almost like false starts for me, like there were sections where there'd be so much description of, like, a place or a moment, or whatever. And I was just like, who are we talking like? I would get lost in what was happening, and then we would come because, like, almost every chapter sort of has, like, a lot of, a lot of description, and then, like, the action of the chapter. And in my mind, I was thinking about that as jazz, as like, going, like, the sort of like, playing around, playing around, and then you go back to the melody, or, like, go back to the main line of the song, right? And so there would be these, like, she would preview maybe what was gonna happen, and then she would do all this description, and then she would come back to the thing she had previewed, and, like, play it out for you. And so again, I thought that was really cool, because I felt like I could see what the idea was, but some of the execution was harder for me. Like, I would be like, who, who's talking again. Or can I am I? Can I

Eve Dunbar 11:48

ask you, this is sort of, yeah. Do you like jazz music? Not really well. Yeah. I'm not a huge jazz music listener either. But you know, when you sit down to listen to it, or if it's playing, you just kind of, you ride right, and you enjoy the note that you enjoy, or you enjoy that instrument, and that person's riff on the line right, and then the next person gets a shot. And yeah, and I feel like, especially with those characters, and maybe the main ones, Violet, Joe and Dorcas, you know, like they're all incomplete, they're all flawed. Dorcas is kind of too young to to hate, but I think right, you're sub at points, you're supposed to kind of see her as like a petty child who's playing with grown folks lives. But did she deserve to be murdered? No Right. But I think like even at the level of those kind of main characters, Morrison wants you to kind of align yourself, realign yourself, come back, go forward, you know. And in that way, the jazz of characterization, I think, is, is what she really gets well for you as a reader. And again, yes, if that's not your your bit, then you can get the book just like, Well, yeah, I

Traci Thomas 13:21

think that's exactly right. And I don't like again, none of this is really criticism of what she did. I think she executed exactly what she set out to execute. But for me as a reader, it's just really not the kind of book that feels satisfying to me, especially like when I think about, like a Sula or a song of salt, like it's like, because on the show, we've been reading through everything. Like, for example, last year we read tar baby, and that ending is extremely vague and unsatisfying in a totally different way, right? It's like that book ends and you're like, what? He's blind, like he's on a Island. What's happened here, but it's in line with the story. And this book sort of ends, and it's almost like a totally different thing has started in that last little, kind of mini chapter, yeah, but I do think there's this one line super early in the book where Violet is doing a woman's hair, and she's like talking about what's going on in her life. And the woman's like, are you trying to rival like a dead person? And she says, You can't rival the dead for love you lose every time. And to me, I underlined it when I read it, and I think it is like, sort of the thesis of the entire book, right? Like everyone's grappling with the dead people in their lives, whether it's Dorcas or, in Dorcas case, like trying to find some connection to her parents, or, in Joe's case, trying to, like, connect with wild or whoever. Like, there's this and orcas, but there's this, like, underlying factor of like, all of these people are trying to figure. Out how to rival the dead for love, and they're all like, failing Alice, like, it's like everybody,

Eve Dunbar 15:07

yeah and again, just in some way, she gives you the thesis within the first, like 10 pages.

Traci Thomas 15:17

Well, let's talk about the first Okay, let me tell you my reading experience, because I think you'll appreciate this. I opened the book. The first word of the book is S, T, H, like, sucking teeth. And I was like, What the fuck is this like, what is this word? And then I read the sentence, and I was like, Oh, okay. And then I got to the bottom of the first or the end of the first paragraph, and I had to put the book down and go on my Instagram and be like, you guys, I have found the perfect first paragraph in all of literature. Then I go back to the book, and I read all the way to the end of the first section, which, you know, is it in my copy, it's just like, it's like two and a half pages later, and it ends with, what turned out is, who shot whom. And I literally wrote in my book Tony set this shit all the way the fuck up, like it is the greatest, it is the greatest introduction to a book I think I have ever read. I was so hooked. I think it is a spectacular start, like, I don't even know the first paragraph is an entire short story, yeah, like with the parrot saying I love you. She's killing the My God. And then the chapter ends with that parrot again, with the I love it. The first chapter of this book was unbelievably good to me. I think it is the best Toni Morrison little thing I've ever read. I like to me, I was just like, holy cow, unreal. I don't know, what do you think? You're a writer. I'm sure you think about

Eve Dunbar 17:04

these. I love the first sentence because you're like, who is this who is this person? Who is this narrator, who seems pissed from sentence one, right? Yeah, I know that woman, right. So now I just love the way that that opening line invites you into, you know, gossip, really, yes, right? We love gossip, right? And it's sort of like when you read it's very different, very different tone from The Bluest Eye, which, you know, quiet as it's kept. There were no, you know, which is a different secret, which is a different secret, right? So she's to, sort of, okay, there's, this is a book that's about death one, but it's also a book about love, right? And then it's also a book about secrets. Who keeps secrets? Who do we keep our secrets from? What are the biggest secrets of anybody's life? Like it's so it has all of this intrigue from that first sentence, right? And that first section. So, yeah, I, I always love it. My favorite lines, though, are also in the first section. She just is, like on her shit here, in the spirit about the razor buildings. No, it's the description of violet, right? So she says violet did the dance steps. The Dead Girl used to do all that when she had the steps down pat her knees, just so everybody, including the ex boyfriend, got disgusted with her, and I can see why it was like watching this is the line for me, like watching an old street pigeon pecking the crust of a sardine sandwich that the cats left Behind right like to describe violets. Like this is her attempt at, I don't even know. It's not retrobution. It's her attempt at, like, trying to figure out why Joe would do her like he did her. And everybody watching her is like, You're disgusting, like you're trying to mimic this dead girl, and you look like the part of a sandwich. Alley cats don't want, you know, and pigeons, it's like the lowest of the low. And so to think about like, how do you even come up with that description of a person? And to me, every time I read it, I'm like, Oh, that's so low. Tony. That's so low to describe her in this way. So I just love that.

Traci Thomas 19:44

I love that too. I love that about her. I think, like in some more contemporary fiction now, authors don't are thinking about how they don't want to, quote, unquote, judge their characters. Or there's this like idea that, like you. You can't like that. Authors shouldn't be judging their characters, and I'm so fundamentally opposed to that. I think that what Toni Morrison does so well is judge her characters. She is not kind to them or generous with them. She sees them as they are, and she reflects that information to us in a way that, like I have another line in or another section in that same first part, where it's after we learned about the baby getting stole her taking the baby, and she says that violet, you know, is angry, and she snatches her bag. And then that's the last time I do a favor for anyone on this block, watch your own damn babies. And she thought of it that way ever after remembering the incident as an outrage to her character. And I wrote, I know exactly who Violet is, like these little sentences, she's that woman who's like, she's fucked up, she did a bad thing. But then she gets in. She's Trump in some ways. She gets indignant when you call her out, right? And it's like, Oh, I was just trying to watch your baby. And it becomes this whole thing in her mind. And every time the baby comes up, you know, she's gonna bring up. I was just watching that girl's baby, and she wouldn't told everybody, right? And that she spins these ideas out in her mind so that she's never in the wrong she's never the bad guy. She's always the aggrieved person. And I just, like, in that one sentence, I could just imagine, you know, she's that, that Auntie you have who's, like, bitter and old and, yeah, crabby. I feel like that's

Eve Dunbar 21:27

yes. And I think, like, the thing that about that scene that's so interesting to me to go to what you're saying about Morrison and someone she has no favorites, right? Yes, yes. And Violet is is aggrieved in a variety of ways, is troubled, and she also is like a human being. So she does weird, like she tries to, I don't know if she's stealing this baby necessarily. I think she is in a in a state, right? And in the book, Morrison talks about that state like as kind of falling into the cracks of life, that she has these moments where she isn't herself and is beside herself. And you know, you could say different people would say she has a second sense, right? She can, she can see things that other people can't see. Blah, you know, some people would say she's crazy. So on that street, you have people who like, see this young girl who's just left a baby with a stranger, and they're like, who leaves a baby with a stranger. And then there are other people who are like, That lady is crazy, right? And in some ways we don't know as readers where we stand, where we stand, or you fit, or you can stand in multiple places. And I feel like that is a gift that she, that Morrison, gives us as readers. Is the is the opportunity, over and over and again, yes, to come to a different relationship with a character, see them in that moment as like that auntie who can't be wrong, but also in the next moment to see them as somebody who is breaking like she's literally breaking with kind of, in that case, a mother want, a mother desire or desired, a mother that's passed her by, right? We know that they've, they've not, she and Joe haven't had children, but that might be something that she had wanted. They tried. It didn't work. And so it's like just this, really, for me, not even complex, because that's to say simple. Say it simply. But like this, really human, like human characterization.

Traci Thomas 23:42

I think you're so right about the opportunities that Toni Morrison gives her readers to see the characters over and over in different ways. Because even though where the book starts, I was like, Oh, I know who Violet is by the end, I felt differently about her. But I don't think that Toni Morrison changes her approach, right? She doesn't, all of a sudden soften to violet and put violet like, she just keeps giving us this information, yeah, and like, maybe, you know, I definitely do think she judges her characters in the sense that she has a point of view about them, right? Very strong. But she also gives us the space to have our own points of view by giving us a lot of information about them in these little tidbits and moments. And I think one of the things that Toni Morrison doesn't get enough credit for is being funny. Oh yeah,

Eve Dunbar 24:29

she's hilarious. Funny. Well, that's why, like that cat, like the pigeon scene, like, it's hilarious. It's so rude. She's so rude.

Traci Thomas 24:38

Yes, and like, I think, you know, it's like this almost. I use this word a lot to describe writers who sort of do the same thing. It's like this meanness. She's not nice to people in her books. And I appreciate that, because it makes the people feel so real. It's like, of course, if you saw this woman doing that dance, you would be like, ew. Maybe you wouldn't come up with crusty birds. Bed that nobody wants to eat, but you would be like, Oh, she's doing the Mo's. This is so embarrassing. That feeling of like, ick, this is it, yeah. And I love that she gives us the opportunity to feel icky about these people, because then when you come to find out the backstory, or whatever you get to feel like about these people. And if you didn't feel the ick, you probably wouldn't feel the Yeah, really very good vocabulary by me. I

Eve Dunbar 25:29

think that's I think that's it, though, I think that that like real emotional response, and I think that's what we don't give each other most of the time because we don't, maybe partners, perhaps children, but like we don't give our friends necessarily, because we can't be as close to them for as long as we are to partners and perhaps kind of close family members like the opportunity to make mistakes, to be wrong and like, mad wrong, like, really wrong, right? And come back to you, or come back to Yeah, come back to some good place with you. I think in this culture especially, we are like, Okay, I'm done. Like, we're never talking again, ghosts block, whatever the discourse is, or whatever the button you push is to just sort of get rid of this person. I think, like, that's where we are as a culture right now. I feel that. But I think Morrison, and especially in setting it in the 20s, especially in kind of creating characters, rich characters, is like, Okay, what if you don't throw folks away? Like, how do you live with the man who cheated on you with a teenager right downstairs, you know, right in your apartment building? How do you keep living with that man? Perhaps you're going to be kind of gross and try to, like, mimic this kid, but like, there's other stuff that happens in between that gets you from that absolute violation to a friendship with that that person again. So I think that she kind of represents in the fiction, the possibility of ongoing friendship after violation, which I think we probably all need to see or experience. Yeah,

Traci Thomas 27:30

and also, like, we're getting to see some really intimate stuff of people in a way that, like, you just don't get to people that you're building relationships with, right? Like, it takes a lot of time, but here we get to do it in 229, pages, right, right? We just, she cuts right to the quick. Yeah. And speaking of cutting, there is so much cutting razor imagery in this book, and I'm not really a close reader, but I noticed this, and I'm wondering what what is that? What does it mean? What do you make of it? I

Eve Dunbar 28:02

mean, I could go academic on you and just please and say, you know, there's this whole idea, because we're dealing with working class people, right? There's this, like blues idea that violence is a form of intimacy. There are a couple of blues scholars who write about that, who write about the way that, let's say, a Jeep joint or a club, a blues club, in the early part of the century, the way that those working class people kind of engaged with one another entailed a certain amount of violence and love and sex and all of those things and that that is a form of bodily autonomy and control over one's life. I don't know if I buy it necessarily, but you do see it in the blues. You know, blues music has a lot of violence and and although the book is called Jazz, Morrison is also kind of keyed into blues, a blues tradition. And so I think that what she's trying to get at, and I forget the character's name there, she's talking to her, Alice, I think who is talking about how she's trying to get out of like she's violence averse. I can't remember if I if I find it, I'll reference it. She's violence averse, and she considers like upward mobility, right, as the key to escaping the kind of violence of of working class life. I don't know if I believe that necessarily, but I think Morrison is trying to kind of think about that right, like what kinds of intimacies are available in condoned. Right in different contexts, class context, regional context. And I'll tell this story only because it reminds me, I was at my grandmother's funeral, my uncle and my grandmother's from South Carolina. My uncle was like, you know, when we were kids, we would go back down south every summer, and we were at so and so's house, and somebody did something. And, you know, my mother, my grandmother, pulled out a razor, and they were and they got to and they were about to cut each other, her and her, like cousin, and he was, like, it was so crazy. And so I just think about, like, a different time when this kind of intimacy and violence was, I don't know, I don't want to say common, but you know what could break out, and so I don't, I think that Morrison is just kind of trying to capture that, that time when This kind of intimacy and violent intimacy was probably a little more commonplace for a lot more people. That

Traci Thomas 31:07

makes sense. And also, I think the difference between, like, I mean, nowadays we hear a lot about this. Like to shoot someone, yeah, is very distant, but to cut, to stab someone is like a crime of passion, yeah? And so I do think, because we have Joe shooting Dorcas, and then we have violet coming with the razor to cut her at like that, there is this like attempt, like that. Violet is attempting this intimacy with this dead girl in the same way that she's trying on her dance moves and trying to, you know, get the picture. Yeah, I was, like, you messy, so weird.

Unknown Speaker 31:43

So

Traci Thomas 31:45

it's like, oh, Violet is so cringe to me. And I just, I'm like, Violet, honey, please. Like, please, Violet. But I do. I hadn't thought about it in that way until you said that. But that makes, that makes so much sense, even

Eve Dunbar 31:59

Joe's choice to use that. I mean, there's all this, like, women don't use guns men, you know, blah, blah, blah, yeah, like, like, the gender choice of the of the violence, but even Joe's choice of a gun, like, he's so close when he shoots violent, right? That's what's also terrible. And so I just think, like all these folks, or these two folks in particular, these two characters, are trying to get at a closeness that they don't have either capacity or access to through simply words, right? Because we have these beautiful scenes, and it's so messed up to call them beautiful, but when Joe and violet, or Joe and Dorcas kind of spend the night together, and you know, Morrison describes how Joe is telling her things that he's never told anybody in his entire life, because she's the first person that he's ever chosen to talk to tell like, that's a deep intimacy. It's inappropriate, absolutely, but I think, like, that's the thing. Like, what is a part of me just in talking to you right now, I'm thinking, like, what does Morrison want us to know about intimacy? It's appropriate. When is it appropriate? How? What's the appropriate way to express it? Yeah,

Traci Thomas 33:30

okay, wait, I have to ask you this, because age gap has come up a few times this year on this podcast. We just did Parable of the Sower, which has a famously large age gap relationship as well, and obviously, like we've never done Lolita on the show, but that's another book. What do you think? And I'm asking you to speculate here. Okay, so I know you don't know, but what do you think is so interesting about age gap romances that so many, like great writers, spend time and energy doing it like, to me, I'm sort of just like, at a place in my life where I'm like, That's icky, like, I don't want to be here, and I wonder why. There are other things that are icky that I also don't care about, like, don't want to spend time with. But I feel like maybe don't get the same kind of treatment as this sort of older man, younger woman, and especially in the way where it's like almost not a celebration of it, but like a humanizing of it, like making us want to feel sympathy towards Joe in some ways, right, even though not only is he a man in his 50s who's with an 18 year old girl, but he also then murders her like he should be Our villain. And Toni Morrison spends a lot of time trying to make us feel for him. And I'm just wondering, like, Why? Why? And again, I know you're speculating. I don't

Eve Dunbar 34:49

know. I think, I mean, part of me thinks like we're in a different cultural moment where we see the inappropriateness. Because we have a different lens to talk about power. And then they had even, like, 30 years ago, right, right? I think everybody in the book thinks that what Joe has done with Dorcas is inappropriate. Yes, I don't know if in Lolita, like, right? You get that same ex, the same presumption, and she's way younger, too. But I think that, I think it has to do with masculinity and power, ultimately, right? Like that men, and that's why it's important that Violet is also here as that kind of middle aged, past her prime, still, we know that she's beautiful, like she gets a young boyfriend, she's trying to outdo Joe by getting a younger boyfriend, so she can pull a young dude. So

Traci Thomas 35:52

she's, yeah, she's and so I think Felice says she's hot, yeah, you know, she's

Eve Dunbar 35:56

an attractive middle aged woman. But I think, like, the culture has always been obsessed with youth and beauty, and Dorcas has that she's also like, complected, right? Like so Morrison is playing on all these tropes of like, what makes somebody desirable, and I do not know why. I think I want to say like men, men like this story because, yeah, they get, they get to live out fantasies about, like, being with, like, young girls. I think Morrison is really, again, trying to think about these questions of appropriate, like, what's appropriate, what's what is the proper or the less violent way to love when at you know, we're just at this point, 60 years like two generations out of enslavement, like a group of people have never had the opportunity, or have are just very new to the opportunity to couple in the way that they want to couple and build lives and families with the people that they want to life like or love like. How do you navigate? How do you know what the right thing to do is? How do you know? So I think she's interested in these questions. I don't know what to do with I mean, the thing that she does with Joe is make him a crying mess from the beginning to you know what I mean, so like, you build sympathy if you're sympathetic to him, because always,

Traci Thomas 37:32

and he's the only, he's the only male perspective that we get. Yeah, we hear about other men in the book, but we hear from Alice, or we see from Alice's side, we see from Felice, we see from violet, we see from Dorcas, and then it's just Joe. And I think when I in my reading that that in addition to like being like the crying, sopping, sort of weak, whatever gender norm mess, it does sort of feminize him. Yeah, right, like it does, there's no other man to compare him to. Really, there are other men in the story, but he, it's like, you compare Alice to violet, yeah, you compare Dorcas to Felice. Like, it's right there for you to do that, yeah? And with Joe, it's sort of just like, and then there's Joe, yeah, the

Eve Dunbar 38:15

sad boy. Very complete sad boy, yeah. Um,

Traci Thomas 38:19

wait, hold on, we should take a really quick break, and then we'll come right back. Okay, we're back. Continue with your thought about, we were talking about Joe being a sad boy, yeah,

Eve Dunbar 38:30

he's just a complete sad boy who needs to figure out for himself, like, why he's messing with a kid. And I think she gives us the rationale throughout the book as to, you know, why

Traci Thomas 38:46

we should talk about, let's talk about Joe's backstory. Because, as I mentioned before, first of all, the moment golden gray is is exposed to us. I was like, there it is. There's our tragic mulatto. We found him. He is here. He like, I mean, as soon as I figured I was like, flagged, flagged. I always love the tragic mulatto in any book. I'm always looking for it because I myself, am, you know, I am one, not though I don't think I'm tragic, you know, but I just especially the male one like this, like pretty boy, privileged, pretty golden boy. I mean, he's literally a golden boy. His name is golden. His skin is golden. He has gray eyes. He, his last name is gray. He, he's the cast off child of doesn't even know it until you know the action where he starts, comes in. He's looking for his dad, and then he stumbles across a wild woman who His name is wild. I mean

Eve Dunbar 39:49

the names, the names, it's thin, thinly nailed, yeah,

Traci Thomas 39:53

I love the names. I mean the reveal of Joe's last name, Joe. Trace. Left without a trace. I gasped. I was literally like, Oh my God, of course. It was like, he got to pick his own name. I'm like, why did he pick trace? Like, what? And then it's like, your parents left without a trace. And then he goes to school and says, that's his name. Oh my god. Anyways, but all of the characters in Joe's story, all of their names are very thinly veiled. We've got golden Gray, the golden boy. We've got wild the wild woman. We've got the dad, whose name is Henry lestorie, or, I think that's how it's pronounced, but there's some opportunity for change, but whose nickname is Hunter's Hunter, because he's a good hunter. And then, of course, the cat King, the cat who is a girl cat without a personality named for like a royal dog or something. I just loved that little bit. But yes, so the whole coming together of the stories and the fact that golden gray is actually raised by Violet's grandmother, I found that to be so fascinating, because it's almost like this faded mates, kind of love story. Then for Joe and violet, it's like he falls out of a tree at the feet of a woman who is connected to his origin story, for the his birth, like he doesn't exist, potentially, if not for Golden Gray, saving his mom, but also maybe he exists in a totally different way, if not for Golden Gray, startling his mom, right?

Eve Dunbar 41:27

I think that that, but you, what you just said, is the key to me in terms of why, maybe why he's such a sad boy, not just because of the kind of general sadness, but that that he had, that this is faded, right? Like that, the life that he is living is not the life that he chose, necessarily, yes,

Traci Thomas 41:51

right? And that's what makes dork is so exciting, because he they have

Eve Dunbar 41:55

that whole bit like he got chosen by violet. He didn't do the choosing, but this is the thing that he chooses. And so I think Morrison is going to give you the go back and give you all of this coincidence and, and ultimately, the fadedness. But you know, in traditional storytelling that fadedness would be the key to romance, right? That violet and Joe are fated to be together, and we should be happy, but Right?

Traci Thomas 42:29

And even, and also like, because his story almost reads like a fairy tale, right? It's like this Golden Boy, this prince, this rich, pretty boy. He saves the damsel in distress, who is pregnant, who has this son, who learns to be a great hunter by Hunter's Hunter. And he should go off into the world. And, you know, meet the damsel who, or meet the woman who, he falls out of the tree. And we should have this hero. And instead, he is our pathetic, sad boy loser who's dating an 18 year old and I mean, like, it's like he's set up in every way for to be the hero, but because of the way the book is written, we know that he's sort of a failed person when we get this backstory. But even the way that section is written. It felt really different to me. It felt like a it felt like a fairy tale, sort of in the midst. And

Eve Dunbar 43:27

I think that the fairy tale right element ultimately has to fail, because we're talking about black characters too. Sure you know what I mean, like that. The reality is that these fairy tale endings are historically inaccessible, right to to African Americans post emancipation into segregation, and so I think, like again more since working all these threads to bring you back to Okay, so what do we do when we have all the elements of, or the plot elements and character elements for, for fairy tale, but then you're talking about America, and you're talking about black characters who have to find a different way to access the fairy tale, or a different fairy tale, right? Yeah. And I think that's that to me, because I don't want to get in, you know, I'm not a sad sack, necessarily. I don't think that, you know, black life, I'm not a pessimist is like nothing but sadness. And I don't think Morrison, like, that's why you have the ending to this novel that you have. She's like, Okay, you have all of this, all of this historical reality, all of your personal mental health problems, and yet there's still possibility that you can find love, that you can find friendship, that you can find your way back to something that feels a little more. Goal. And I think that possibility and crafting possibility for black characters is what I think a lot of people love about Morrison.

Traci Thomas 45:09

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think the scene we have to talk about, the scene between Hunter's Hunter and and golden gray where, because I think one of the things, you know, there's that famous clip of Morrison being interviewed, and the woman's like, Well, would you ever write about white people? And she's like, You don't understand how profoundly racist This is, yeah. But I think this book is really interesting, because the way that whiteness shows up in this book, the way that she drags white people without ever giving she gives us one white character or two, I guess, if you include the dad of or the grandfather of golden Gray, but the way that she, like, inserts the violence of whiteness. But then there's the line between the scene between them. I gotta find it. Yeah. I mean again, the Gasp again, where he says he's like, I didn't come down here to court you or get your approval. He said, I know what you came for to see how black I was. You thought you was white, didn't you? She probably let you. She probably let you think it. Hope you'd think it, and I swear I'd think it too. And then he goes on, he says, you know, they've got free n words. And he says, I don't want to be a free N word. I want to be a free man. And free man. And then Henry says, Well, don't we all look be what you want, white or black, choose. But if you choose black, you got to act black, meaning, draw up your manhood quick, like and don't bring me no white boy sass. And truly, I gasped again that like she tells you everything about whiteness in just that one little exchange. And it is, it is unbelievable, because I think back to that quote of her saying, like, you don't understand how preliminary, wasted it is, but she is engaging with white culture in her work, and even though she centers black people, you know not to be too Kamala, but you exist in the context of everything that came before you. Absolutely there is no blackness without whiteness and vice versa. And there is no 1920s Harlem or 1880s Rome or wherever the fuck they are in the scene Vienna, which I also love, that all the places where, other places I'm Vienna robe,

Unknown Speaker 47:24

yeah,

Traci Thomas 47:27

but I just, I love how she it's such a trick of her writing, like it's that she slides these, these pieces in to acknowledge that there is a whole greater context to these characters, without having to be like the like, she talks about the violence and and what happens to Dorcas or, yeah, what happens to Dorcas parents and like all of that. Yeah.

Eve Dunbar 47:51

But that is the again, going back to this idea that, like, okay, so white people are here like they're, they're always, often at the periphery of her text, right there. They're never central one. But, yeah, we live in a world that is constructed by power. And she's going to show you the way power works always. And yet you have to keep living, right? And black people have historically kept living when when faced with the reality of life in a white supremacist country. And so I think, yeah, she really and that scene too is so great, because here you are a character who can pass. And you can choose, are you going to go the white way? Are you going to go the black way? And if you choose to go the black way, you have to be ready to weather this place, right? And you can't be a sad sack. You can't be bumbling. You can't you have to have a different sort of in this case, he saying, masculinity, yeah, but you have to have a different sort of vigor to make it through. And you, unlike a lot of people, you have a choice now. She's widely wisely, and so I think, like all her, yeah, she's going to drive whiteness, not because white people necessarily always suck, but many of them do in her books, because white power makes things way more difficult than it needs, than they ever need to be for all of her characters,

Traci Thomas 49:34

right? And even in that exchange between the two of them, right? You know hunters. Hunter says it. He's like, I know why you came right? And it's like, you go into that scene thinking you're gonna get one thing. You think you're gonna get golden Gray, being like, what happened? You didn't care about me, whatever. And immediately you get, I didn't even know you existed. You flip it. Flips the whole power dynamic back to the mother, right? Yeah. All of a sudden becomes this whole other. Our conversation, and again, I just think she's so good at sort of surprising and in many ways, delighting her readers in these scenes. It's like there's all these little turns and tricks where you think you know what you're gonna get, and it's never the thing that you're expecting. It's always slightly subverted or slightly, you know, fractured or broken and and just like, from a storytelling perspective, it is what makes, for me, her work enjoyable. Yeah, she sets you up in a framework that you understand. So when she, you know, just pulls the thing out from underneath you, you're like, oh shit, but it's not so crazy that she's, she's not reinventing the wheel. She's just like, put a little notch in it. It's like, oh, which I guess is a way of reinventing the whole thing well, but it's also a way

Eve Dunbar 50:51

to, again, to get at what we've been talking about, which is like, you know, you think the you think the world is going to be one way, and then you go out into the world and it's not quite what you thought. And how do you how do you find your footing again? And I think like again, this kind of, you know, when people talk about her capacity to create human characters, I think she also has a great capacity to create human situations like they may not be situations that we'd ever find ourselves in, right, you know, but that you might go into a relationship, a job, a family event, and think you're going to hear this one story, and then somebody's going to be like, Oh, no, no, no. That's not what happened. This thing happened, and then you have to, like, readjust who you thought you were, who you thought this person was, and that's the human experience that she's really gifted at. And it never feels contrived, or rarely does it feel contrived, like, I'm just doing this to, like, put you on your heels. Yeah? That that, like, it feels like, oh, yeah, the appropriate thing that a character should say in that moment, you know? And that's a, that's, that's a writerly

Traci Thomas 52:16

gift, yeah? I mean, the moment, there's a moment in the book that I wrote down in the same thing. It's very small, but it's the name violet, and then people calling you violent, yeah. And I was like, Oh, is this Oprah? Were you silent, or were you silent? You know, the moment with Meghan Markle. I was like, Oh, I now I know where Oprah got it from, because, you know Oprah,

Unknown Speaker 52:36

yeah, but it's definitely,

Traci Thomas 52:37

are you violet, or are you violent. But I think

Eve Dunbar 52:41

she's also, like, also playing with this idea that there's innate violence in women, right, that we don't see, or that somehow gets policed. To go back to what you were saying about, like, sad Joe, sad boy Joe. Like, how come he's the murderer, right? And, and everybody's calling her violent right now, right? Right, right? Violet, like, she didn't even succeed in slashing, right, because debt. She tried it, she tried it, but she didn't get there, and she knew she wasn't going to get there, right? You know? But this is

Traci Thomas 53:14

talking about in the book, yeah. I mean, there's that whole scene where Alice is talking about the violence against women, and then she's like, but God gives everyone defenses, and if you don't use it, that's on you sort of thing, which weirdly remind, do you know Shakespeare at all? Yeah, a little. It reminded me so much of the scene between Desdemona and Amelia, the willow scene, because it's the, I do think it's husband's faults if wives do stray, and that, like, sort of that intimate conversation between women about, like, what men will do and what women should do in response. And obviously it's different, because it's, you know, it's a different thing, but it just sort of is this like conversation of like, okay, well, we know men are going to be violent against women. We see it everywhere, but if women don't fight back, like that's on women. And I feel like, for whatever reason, I just that's like my favorite scene in Shakespeare. I'm always thinking of the willow scene, but it reminded me of that kind of, like, intimate, womanly conversation about what men do and what women do, and

Eve Dunbar 54:21

what the limitations of the responses that women can and the expectation,

Traci Thomas 54:25

yeah, and

Eve Dunbar 54:27

I think, I think that that's kind of again violet, to go back to the opening and the ickiness of her kind of really trying to step into Dorcas shoes, literally, is that they're just so few appropriate, socially appropriate ways of either mourning or being or responding and and you see her choose the wrong one in that you know social the socially unacceptable, and you. In the baby scene, you know, mourning the fact that she's not a mother, and then, you know, thus stealing or borrowing somebody's baby. You know, just trying to see what it's like to hold this baby down the street. But I just think, yeah, like, what are the appropriate ways for women to behave? And these are questions that everybody's been asking women authors ask over time, yeah, so

Traci Thomas 55:27

one of the things that I cannot figure out is, who is our narrator? Who is this omniscient person who knows everything and sees everything, the book,

Eve Dunbar 55:36

the city, okay? Yeah,

Traci Thomas 55:40

sure. Someone in the stacks pack said that they think it could be wild. Oh,

Eve Dunbar 55:45

I never think it's an actual person from the from the lies. I always think, and I'm trying to figure out kind of how I arrived at this all the time, because you need somebody who's who lives in Harlem, like that's who is, who's present in that contemporary moment, to open up and say, right, you know,

Traci Thomas 56:14

but that person also has to know the backstory to you, like it's so I don't I sometimes I like to just think it's Toni Morrison. She's her. She's like, No, I know that woman. I wrote about her, everybody,

Eve Dunbar 56:25

though, yeah, yes, I think it's, I think it's in part the city, I think. And then at the end, when, you know, look where your hands are, look where your hands are, like, isn't that the last line, it says, So, so, make me, remake me. You are free to do it, and I am free to let you. Because, look, look, look where your hands are now, right? And so I'm holding the book as I read this. So the book, the Talking Book, right? The book is the and this is like the Talking Book is a tradition in African American literature. You know, historically black people were not allowed to be taught to read or write, and so in a highly verbal vernacular culture, you have a different way of constructing books that's really around orality. And I think that opening line, I know that woman begins you thinking about the sound of the voice, and then at the end, when she's asking us to when the narrator is saying, look, look where your hands are now, right? You're you're called back to the the physical book itself. And so like thinking about the way a book can talk and make a world, I think is really helpful for me in thinking about who might be narrating, who might know all the know in this in this text,

Traci Thomas 57:54

okay, I want to talk about the ending really quick between Felice and Joe and violet, because in the first section that I loved so much, it ends with that they take another they take another lover, another girl, but that it ends differently in whom shot whom, or who shot whom. And I thought we were gonna get another murder at the end, but we don't, right.

Eve Dunbar 58:20

She sort of tricked us there. She tricked you into thinking that this,

Traci Thomas 58:24

that's how I read that, that it's like this one just ends differently because she says violet invited her in to examine the record, and that's how the scandalizing threesome on Lennox Avenue began. What turned out different was who shot whom. So I thought we have a murder, another murder. The whole time I was like, I was reading it, yeah, who are they gonna kill?

Eve Dunbar 58:47

But I think that, I mean, I wonder if it's better to think of about Cupid's arrow rather than an actual bullet.

Traci Thomas 58:55

That would have been smarter.

Eve Dunbar 58:56

But I think it doesn't. I think that the the real play for us is to see that if, if you're going to do this, if you're going to kind of bring a young person into your relationship, then it has to be open. You know, in this way, it's like an open relationship, like, you know what I mean, it has to be open and who shot whom? I don't know if it has to be a literal shooting, as much as, like, who, who's, you know, I don't know affecting who's, who's, like, in charge of the the emotional leverage, or the levers of love in this relationship, in this new throuple, yeah, and but that is always for me, whenever I read this book, that relationship, I'm I, I, I always, never know what to do with it.

Traci Thomas 59:58

Do you know what I'm. I don't with police in them, yeah,

Eve Dunbar 1:00:01

why? Why they need to have this young person kind of be present in their their relationship? I don't know. Do you feel like, No, I

Traci Thomas 1:00:11

don't. I don't feel clear on why? Maybe because she knew Dorcas and so she brings, she can provide them with like, like that bridge because she didn't really like Dorcas, but also she knew her and was intimate with her, so she kind of bridges the two sides of like violet, not liking her and Jove missing her, like that. There's she, I guess I don't, I don't, I think, I mean, I think that that last section after the murder scene, I really the book falls apart for like, I couldn't make sense of what I was reading. Like, even the part where it's like, she says to Joe, like, you know, Dorcas told me to tell like, to say there's only one apple, just one, tell Joe. I was like, I don't even know what that like. Am I supposed to know what that means? Like is like, like, because and her death scene, she's talking about oranges, and then all of a sudden, it's about an apple. And I just like, I started, I couldn't I felt like I was able to hold everything in the book together up until the murder scene of Dorcas, and then those last two chapters, I just was like, I don't know where I am or why.

Eve Dunbar 1:01:16

I think, yeah, I don't know how to answer

Traci Thomas 1:01:19

that. Yeah, but no, it's not really a question. It's just sort of like, yeah.

Eve Dunbar 1:01:23

It's just a reading thing. And I do think that again, this is why, when we started, I was like, you know, I read and I reread, and I still, after having read, pre read it, I'm still not sure I completely understand, I understand what I think you're right, in terms of Felice kind of being this bridge character for those two to come back together. They need this third person to stand in and in some ways, in a better way than Dorcas stood between them. But I think that for me, I'm just like, Well, okay, like, ultimately, at the end of the day, these two kind of have to find themselves together. They do find themselves back together. I guess that's a good thing. I'm not sure, but there's something there there that every time I read, I'm challenged to try to kind of come to some feeling that beyond confusion. And I still have it, I still haven't gotten there.

Traci Thomas 1:02:29

So, yeah, okay, the last thing, which is sort of where we started, just the title of the book, jazz. We talked about how it's written a lot like jazz music. The one thing I did want to mention is the word jazz is never in the book. No, and all of her other books that I've read, the title appears in the book in some way or another. My personal favorite is how it's revealed in a mercy. That's the title that I was that was my take your breath away moment in that book. It's interesting that she doesn't because there's they talk about the music, Alice talks about how bad the music is. I think that violet and Joe, in some ways, are all of the things that Alice thinks are bad about the music, sort of personified like that. They're violent and they're evil and they're crazy and all this stuff. But she never says it. Do you have any sense as to why, why it's not present, why the word isn't in the book? Yeah, it's a departure from everything else that I've read by her so far. I

Eve Dunbar 1:03:29

wonder if it would just be on the nose to have people say, and now we're listening to jazz. I also wonder if you know the what they're if they're actually because I think they're listening probably to blues, like the okay record that they that even in that early scene, it's going to probably be a blues record, but it's the Jazz Age. So I'm wondering if she's like, well, it's, it's on the nose to call it, to have jazz, to have somebody say, and now we're going to go listen to jazz. Or this is so jazzy, I guess you know what I mean. Like, it might be one of those. Just like, she doesn't say this is the Harlem Renaissance, like they

Traci Thomas 1:04:07

wouldn't have called it. She never says New York or Harlem. She also says the city.

Eve Dunbar 1:04:11

So there's no, like, direct naming of period, of place, or of musical genre, right? But I think, like, for her, the form of the text is the the naming of it. I mean, yeah, that's where I would say, that's where I leave it. And I also think, like, it gets at what she's really the unformed ness of, like, what does it mean to live through and in the middle of something, a time that when you're living through it doesn't have a name, right? Or isn't going to be named, what we would name it now, and so, like, don't drop jazz in. Because it's not like people aren't thinking like that, right, right now at that point, but now, after the fact, we as readers and listeners of music, perhaps, like, know, okay, well, this is what a jazz novel looks like, or this is what jazz music does. So I think, like it's kind of capturing the making this, that this is a that she's interested, again, in capturing what it means to make yourself right and not really have the words or the language or anything to describe completely what it is you're making. And so I feel like, actually, I like that we don't have that super imposition of the word coming out in this kind of, what I would imagine would be a weird moment if somebody were to say, now, let's go to the jazz club. Or, you know, it just would be cheap. I don't know. I don't I feel like it might be a little bit, I'm sure she could figure out how to do it so that it wasn't cheap. But I also think not doing it is just it captures the like making, the fact that this is a time, and the people being made for, you know, on their own, and they don't have the words, and they don't have the capacity to describe it completely in a single word.

Traci Thomas 1:06:27

That's such a good place to end. Okay, this was amazing. Thank you so much. Everybody. Don't forget to get your copies of monstrous work and radical satisfaction. Eve's book that comes out in November Eve. Thank you so much for being here. This was really a treat. Thank you so much, Tracy and everyone else. We will see you. Oh, wait everyone else, don't forget to listen to the end of the episode to find out our book club pick for October, and we will see you in the stacks.

All right, y'all that does it for us today. Thank you so much for listening, and thank you again to Eve Dunbar for being my guest. I'd also like to say a huge thank you to friend of the pod KSA layman, for helping to make this conversation possible. All right, it is time for the announcement. You've all been waiting for our October book club pick. We are going to be reading the 2019 novel, the nickel boys, by Colson Whitehead. It is a gripping story of injustice, resilience and survival, set against the backdrop of a corrupt reform school during the Jim Crow era. The book won the Pulitzer Prize. It is being adapted to a film that comes out on october 25 and our episode will drop on October 30. You have to listen to our October 2 episode to find out who our guest will be for this discussion. And if you want 10% off your copy of nickel boys, head to rep dot club and order your copy and use the code stacks 10. That's rep dot club. Search for the book the nickel boys and use the code stacks 10 for 10% off your copy. If you love the show and you want inside access to it, head to patreon.com/the stacks and join the stacks. Pack and check out my sub stack at Traci Thomas, dot sub stack.com make sure you're subscribed to the stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts, and if you're listening through Apple podcasts or Spotify, be sure to leave a rating and a review for more from the stacks. Follow us on social media, at the stacks pod on Instagram, threads and Tiktok and at the stacks pod underscore on Twitter, and you can check out our website at the stackspodcast.com this episode of the stacks was edited by Christian Duenas, with production assistance from Megan Caballero. Our graphic designer is Robin mccright, and our theme music is from teguragis. The stacks is created and produced by me Traci Thomas.

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