Jazzthetic Technique: Oralizing Fiction and Jazz Strategies in Toni Morrison’s Jazz

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

See attached review. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I have attached a PDF of the article with extensive comments corresponding to highlighted portions of the text. I would advise the author to read and consider all of these particular comments. 

My overall comment on the essay is that it is not publishable for two major reasons. First, the article does not engage any scholarship in black studies, sound studies, or African Americanist literary studies from the last 16 years. The argument is therefore severely underinformed and out of step with current research in the fields in which it is attempting to engage, which is especially jarring when writing about an author as canonical as Toni Morrison since she is a figure about whom hundreds of articles and books are published every decade. Second, the article offer far too little actual textual evidence for its claims. If this article is meant to be an analysis of a novel, then it requires substantial close reading of actual textual moments in the novel. As of now, this draft is a list of general observations and abstract claims. I would go so far as to say that for all that is written here, there is not actually an analysis of Toni Morrison's Jazz present in the writing. Go to the text. Show how the text does its work. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This is a compelling, rich and generally well informed article.  The theoretical perspective is very effective drawing as it does on Foucault, Adorno, Gilroy and Adorno. There is however a rather confused attempt to engage critically with Gilroy's point about authenticity and Black Atlantic culture. The author claims 'I depart from his assertion that  a genre sound cannot be genealogically traced' (line100), but is then not entirely clear about how a genre sound can be traced. I suggest revisiting this section and re-phrasing or perhaps removing this particular line of argument. The author makes the very important point that 'Morrison uses the characteristics of jazz music, not the music itself' (lines 249-250).  Points such as this  could be strengthened by adding references to interviews (only a couple are referenced) in which she makes a similar case to that of the author.  Specifically, in an interview with Gilroy in Small Acts ((1993) Morrison says 'The power of the word is not music, but in terms of aesthetics, the music is the mirror that gives me the necessary clarity' (p.181). It would be relevant for the author to consult Morrison's essay 'Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation' in What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction of Toni Morrison. She writes, 'For a long time, the art form that was healing for Black people was music. That music is no longer exclusively ours' (p.58).  The author should also refer directly to Bigsby's interview with Morrison rather than cite Rice's reference to it. There is some relevant and insightful close reading in this article but there could be a little more.  Some awareness that the novel is the second part of a trilogy would be useful and more general reference to Morrison scholarship would be helpful.  There are relevant chapters in Baillie, Toni Morrison and Literary Tradition: The Invention of an Aesthetic, for example or in Tally (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Toni Morrison. There is some fine writing here but the article needs careful proof reading and final polishing before publication. Finally, the author advances scholarship on Morrison and music in the development of a convincing theoretical framework, applied to both music and literature in effective ways.

Author Response

Please see attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I submitted a report on an earlier draft.  I think the revised essay is much improved through the omission of some of the more problematic formulations.  I still have some concerns, but think that the argument, as it currently stands, is both coherent and intriguing.   

Author Response

Thank you for your feedback. Are you able to communicate the problematic formulations so that I may address them? I've revised the introduction to ensure clarity of argument and method. Thanks again for your assistance.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx