PrepTest 136, Section 1, Question 15
Music and literature, rivals among the arts, have(444 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(9 more words not shown)
- AIn Jazz ,(29 more words not shown)
- BMorrison's striking description(22 more words not shown)
- CAlthough many African(26 more words not shown)
- DBuilding on the(31 more words not shown)
- EIn Jazz ,(23 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
We've already predicted the main point: Morrison uses the organization of jazz music as a model for the narration in Jazz. Characters have their own voices, but an overarching narrator keeps control, much as Ellington's soloists perform within his compositional frame.
What we’re looking for
Look for that particular achievement. Praise alone, or a statement that the novel is about music, leaves out what the author spends most of the discussion explaining.
Working the answers
- A
The author does admire Morrison's achievement, but this identifies the wrong one. The claimed innovation is using a musical genre to structure an entire novel, not being the first African American fiction with jazz-derived plot, themes, and setting. Those are different claims about what was new.
- B
Morrison's narration is compared to an ensemble performance. We aren't told that a striking description of such a performance is the innovation, or that it makes the book a model for other writers.
- C
The problem isn't simply unique. The author does make a first-of-its-kind claim. The problem is what C calls unique: using jazz as a central metaphor. The claimed advance is in narrative structure, beyond the use of music as a subject or metaphor.
- D
This turns an account of one novel into a story about Morrison developing a style over her career. That history isn't supplied.
- ECorrect
This names both the achievement and the analogy: an original narrative strategy that works like Ellington's musical composition. It captures the controlled framework and individual expression that explain the author's praise.
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