[Erik Olson]

For my part, though I have never been head over heels for magical realism, I did enjoy Beloved through and through, as I found magic in her prose and real perspective in her characters.

[John Isbell]

Hmm. Trying to get a global impression here, our eleven comments on Toni Morrison in the past, oh, day and a half since she died still give me the impression that this Nobel prizewinner has not had a big impact on Sphereans. Which, if so, is what it is, after all - I just find myself a little surprised by the discovery, I'd thought this thread would generate more comments, pro or con. For me personally, I'm glad to see that people seem to admire her work, since I think the work compels that.
Anyway, that's what's on my mind. The loss, the passing.

Cheers,
John

[Erik Olson]

Here is a link to a great interview with Morrison on the eve of her 1993 Nobel Prize win. In it, she touches on, among other things, her writing routines and how she was always unapologetic in her focus on the black American experience. ‘... It’s very important to me that my work be African American,’ says she, ‘if it assimilates into a different or larger pool, so much the better. But I shouldn’t be asked to do that. Joyce is not asked to do that. Tolstoy is not. I mean, they can all be Russian, French, Irish or Catholic, they write out of where they come from, and I do too. It just so happens that that space for me is African American...’

And here is a link to an excerpt of her prose from Sula selected by the Nobel Library of the Swedish Academy.


P.S. John, the number of comments is not necessarily a reliable index to the degree of appreciation among Spherians. How many did not have time in the short interval you cited, had nothing to say not already said perfectly well, did not log on, or did not comment for any number of other reasons otherwise than lack of appreciation? Also, mind you she is not a poet. Myself, I thought there was a decent amount and did not expect cascades pouring in on all sides for any novelist alive or dead necessarily. Still, sorry you are disappointed, if you are, only I would not put so much into it I think.

[John Isbell]

Hi Erik,

And thank you for the links. I'm not sure disappointment is what I feel; perhaps it's mostly just a sort of nagging surprise. As you note, people are likely busy or may feel they've nothing to add to the discussion so far, and she is a prose writer after all. And in fact, the death of say Saul Bellow or Philip Roth would not generate a lot of comments from me. It's just, I guess, that Toni Morrison marks an epoch in my life as an American. So I'm processing that. I can continue I guess to do so in private. :-)

Cheers,
John

[Jim Moonan]

X
This in the New Yorker. For those not able to access, here is the opening paragraph:

In December, 1993, Toni Morrison flew to Stockholm to deliver the lecture required of those awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her subject was the power of language. Words, she said, have the capacity to liberate, empower, imagine, and heal, but, cruelly employed, they can “render the suffering of millions mute.” Morrison was unsparing in her depiction of people who would use language to evil ends. Pointing to “infantile heads of state” who speak only “to those who obey, or in order to force obedience,” she warned of the virulence of the demagogue. “Oppressive language does more than represent violence,” she said. “It is violence.”
X
X

[Bill Dyes]

There may be a brotherhood that we can all get to where a novel or a poem speaks to us as nothing more nor less than a human being and not as a member of a particular culture or gender. I once had a conversation with a friend who regretted immensely that Toni Morrison could not speak more to the ‘human experience’ instead of the 'black experience'. I just didn’t understand what he meant. I only know that in order to get to some meaning of what a ‘human experience’ might actually mean, all of my experience had to next go through Toni Morrison's language in order to have a chance of getting to where he was. And I found that I didn’t want to stay where he was for very long.

[John Isbell]

To me, as an aging white dude, Toni Morrison’s voice is quintessentially American. That’s why it resonates in my heart, that’s why it blew the top off my head, as Emily Dickinson put it. Morrison showed me that this country is quite a bit bigger than I had rather solipsistically realized. In other words, she showed me America.

Cheers,
John

Oh - it’s also just brilliant writing.

[Jim Moonan]

https://thriveglobal.us14.list-manag...e= 6a13ba9e34

[RCL]

“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”
Toni Morrison.

[John Isbell]

Yup. What a brilliant mind.

Cheers,
John