ABSTRACT
This chapter explains a simple argument: that in American culture, the city and the country are complicated places. It begins with an overview of the relationship between city and country in American culture in order to establish the parameters within which Jazz can be understood as a cultural text. The chapter discusses two elements through which Morrison approaches the representation of urban space genre and narration. This is why detective fiction has become such a strong urban genre: The power that the detective holds over the imagination stems from the desire to understand the city. And instead of a detective who solves the case, we have several characters employed in the reading of signs, the following of traces, and the observation of people. It is this cultural situation within which Toni Morrison's Jazz has to be read. The city and the country are important social, economic, and symbolic spaces in American culture that enjoy a rich historical relationship.
