Music and literature, rivals among the arts, have not coexisted without intruding on each other’s terrain. Ever since what we think of as “literature” developed out of the sounds of spoken, sung, and chanted art, writing has aspired to the condition of music, in which form contributes significantly to content. Nowhere is 1992 novel Jazz, a novel set in the Harlem section of New York City in 1926.
In Jazz, the connection to music is found not only in the novel’s plot but, more strikingly, in the way in which the story is told. The narration slips easily from the third-person omniscience of the narrator’s disembodied voice—which, though sensitive and sympathetic, claims no particular identity, gender, or immersion in specific of a jazz band which intertwines its ensemble sound with the individuality of embedded solo performances.
In jazz, composer and conductor Duke Ellington was the first to construct his compositions with his individual musicians and their unique “voices” in mind. Yet no matter how lengthy his musicians’ improvisations, no matter how bold or inventive their solos might be, they always performed within the undeniable logic of the composer’s an art of composition that Duke Ellington perfected around the time in which Jazz is set.
In this novel, Morrison has found a way, paradoxically, to create the sense of an ensemble of characters improvising within the fixed scope of a carefully constructed collective narration. By simulating the style of a genius of music while exhibiting Morrison’s the very possibilities of narrative point of view.
What this question is testing
Your task
Find the choice that makes the argument's conclusion less likely to be true.
Common trap
Answers that look negative but attack a claim the argument never relied on.
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Find the assumption the argument depends on, then pick the choice that undermines it.
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