“No apology or courtesy seemed required or necessary between them. But something else was–clarity, perhaps. The kind of clarity crazy people demand from the not-crazy.”
This passage quietly declares something that goes unspoken in Jazz: That Violet and Alice have a symbiotic relationship. Because the above quote doesn’t say that Alice demands clarity from Violet, but that their relationship requires clarity. This implies that it is a mutual demand, and that it is met because to some degree they are both frenzied crazies demanding things of the sane, unshakeable public.
They want compassion, answers, they want mended collars and neither of them wants forgiveness. They are not friends, necessarily, but two creatures sucking each others’ blood dry and–upon making eye contact–nodding their heads in acknowledgment of each other.
For Violet’s part, she comes to Alice looking for answers about Joe, who Alice doesn’t know and who Violet lives with. Alice doesn’t want to know about Joe much at all, or about Violet, or even about Dorcas. She wants to know about women–women who walk around “with knives,” women who want to break what broke them, and not make something different for themselves.
In this way they are both seized, unable to understand, and because of this balance, they are able to speak clearly to each other about things they may not have even realized they knew.
