jazz (not music)--1911?

[victor steinbok]

I was wondering about that but eventually rejected the equation. I
interpreted "no jazz" as "no bullshit"--such as unnecessary gratuitous sex
scenes (see "Soap opera"). So the dash here IMO is more of a symbol of
inclusion than explanatory equivalence. Of course, I could be wrong... I'm
actually more puzzled by "big".

VS-)

On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 12:00 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ...
>
> >> No _jazz_--no _sex_--just big, clean, interesting books.
>
> Could this be an instance of _sex_ being used to explain _jazz_? There
> were still people alve who used _jazz_ for "fuck" at least as recently
> as the '50's.
>
> Militating against this as a possible interpretation, IMO, is that,
> IME, _jazz_ was never used euphemistically. At least, that was the
> impression that I got from reading the word and from hearing it in the
> wild. According to W:pedia, the series dates from1896 and was about
> probably the quintessential all-American,
> knowing-nothing-about-that-there boys. It would never have been
> necessary to point out to potential readers that Dick was a nice boy.
> If the punctuation were
>
> "No jazz, no sex …"
>
> I'd think, _jazz_ = "a musical genre," with any reference to sex being
> the product of a dirty mind. As it stands, I see "no jazz, i.e. no sex
> (y'all gnome sane <heh! heh!>)" as a dstinct, though very much
> unexpected, possibility. But, of course,
>
> Youneverknow.
> --
>
> -Wilson
>

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