Golden gray and the talking book: identity as a site of artful construction in Toni Morrison's Jazz

African American Review, Winter, 2002 by Caroline Brown

Ironically, Golden is unable to empathize with the needs of the unclaimed newborn, so poignant a reflection of himself. Rather, he sneers, "How touching" (172), to Hunter's concerned words. He wants a father, yet does not want to have to accept the demands of being a son, and certainly not the son of a black father. Yet as Hunter informs him: "Be what you want-white or black. Choose. But if you choose black, you got to act black, meaning draw your manhood up-quick like, and don't bring me no whiteboy sass" (173). While a superficially essentialist definition of blackness, for Hunter, it also points to the lack of luxury fundamental to being black. It is moreover his annoyed response to Golden's assertion that "I don't want to be a free nigger; I want to be a free man." While manhood would appear a suitably lofty goal, it also underscores Golden's implicit rejection of a black identity, its restrictions and taint. His reaction to Hunter's admonition is that he "was sober now and his sober thought was to blow t he man's head off. Tomorrow." He becomes the penultimate Southern gentleman, defending his honor against a usurper. Before the text reverts to the primary narrative of the jazz cycle, it teases with a call--"It must have been the girl who changed his mind" -- then begins the next paragraph, the new segment based on Joe's own doomed quests, with the response--"Girls can do that" (173). Golden Gray disappears from the narrative as swiftly and unexpectedly as he entered it, his fate a mystery beyond the narrative's scope. There is a suggestion that the cave haunted by Wild's presence could actually be his own, furnished as it is with some of his objects. There, he avoids the pull of either blackness or whiteness, "unable to go forward or back" (162), a pretwentieth-century Invisible Man. Yet it also seems probable that he rejects Hunter's challenge. Repudiating his blackness and able to pass as white, he disappears into the expansive promise that is the post-bellum United States, with its crowded cities and endl ess frontier. A third possibility is that he either remains in the cave with Wild or has run off with her, whereabouts unknown. However, Golden's actual choice is less important than the exercise his narrative becomes in artistry as a movement into love with its potential for both transcendence and disappointment.

While the Golden Gray segment functions as a self-contained episode distinct from the larger plot, it is also a continuation of an earlier narrative thread; it serves as both the internal rumination of the artist at work and that same artist's ongoing dialogue with the reader. As the narrator reminds even as the text progresses:

Risky, I'd say, trying to figure out anybody's state of mind. But worth the trouble if you're like me-conscious, inventive and well-informed. Joe acts like he knew all about what the old folks did to keep on going, but he couldn't have known much .... Neither do I, although it's not hard to imagine what it must have been like. (137)