Vinson Cunningham: This is Critics At Large, a podcast from The New Yorker. I'm Vincent Cunningham. Alex Schwartz: I'm Alex Schwartz. Naomi Fry: And I'm Nomi Fry. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. Alex Schwartz: Hello friends. Vinson Cunningham: Hello. What's up? Naomi Fry: Hello to my fellow critics. Hello to the listeners. Um, today is kind of special. Every once in a while we do this thing where we devote a whole episode to the work of a single artist. We've talked about Jane Austen. We've talked about Martin Scorsese, we've talked about Miyazaki. These are really people whose influence on the culture is so large, it's so significant, and who are so beloved. You know, we really felt like we needed a whole show to do each of them justice. And so far it's been a pretty short list. Today is another one of those examples we are going to be talking about. Toni Morrison Morrison wrote 11 novels starting with The Bluest Eye, also Ula Song of Solomon, beloved, uh, all of them massive and and important and recognized many accolades, but. I wanted to turn to you guys. Um, why did you wanna do this episode and why now? Vinson Cunningham: Well, we're close to Toni Morrison's birthday on the, on the 18th of this month, February. She would have been 95 years old. Uh, there's a new book of essays about her work in, in, in terms of its substance, but also its, I don't know, style and form Called on Morrison by, uh, NA Rappel. Alex Schwartz: Yeah. Um, those were good reasons. It had also been a number of years since I really went back to Morrison, the text. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Alex Schwartz: Um, as a reader, just to, just to see what I found there. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Alex Schwartz: Um, and. Like, I can't think of a more exciting artist to just encounter on her own terms. So that was something else I think we wanted to do with this episode, to just go back to the writing, to the books, to the criticism itself and see what we found. And it turns out there's a lot, there's so much, Naomi Fry: there's a. There's a lot, and I think in general, and also in the years since Morrison's death in 2019, I think that the kind of the distance between the text Morrison on the page, what you call, um, and Morrison, the icon, the figure, the monument has grown kind of broader. Alex Schwartz: Definitely, I mean, I think this was something going on in Morrison's life also, and we can talk about that. But there was, you know, for good reason, there was a determined effort to elevate to, she's an icon, you know, she's an icon in every cent. She's a literary icon. She's a genius. She's an American genius. She's a black American genius. She's a black female American genius. There are a lot of labels and reasons to elevate Morrison, the person, and she also herself was an amazing. Explicator of her work and experience. So there are many, many clips that Yeah. Can be watched and shared and commented on. Um, and her persona is, I mean, it's like she's a star. Yeah. It's, it's a star persona that happens to be attached to a writer. So you have both sides of this person, the, the text side and the, the persona side. And it's just easier for a persona to travel. It's, it's harder to go back to rich, dense novels. Um. Than it is to share a clip. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Yeah. And the clips, you know, even if their genesis was in sort of relation to the texts, they're so eloquent and, uh, brilliant in so many cases that they've become, you know, sort of generalizable comments about society, about race, about, uh, oppression, et cetera, et cetera, in a way that is, um, good. If you want Tony Morrison to be remembered and also maybe problematic if you. Want her work to be remembered as what it was. So there's always this kind of problematic and this kind of perpetuation. Yeah. Naomi Fry: You guys are leading me to kind of like, yeah. What we wanna talk about today, which is like, does this monument that we've built to Morrison do her justice? Does it do her work justice? Her life justice? That's today on critics at large, the truth of Tony Morrison. ________________ Okay, so you guys we're gonna get into the work as we just discussed. Before we do, uh, I just wanna hear a little bit from you. What was the first time you encountered Morrison's work? Which, which work was it? When was it, and, and how did it strike you initially? Vinson Cunningham: Um, I wrote about this actually when Morrison died. Uh, the first work of hers that I read was the Bluest Eye, and it was under the instruction of my great English teacher, Deborah Stanford, who. Is one of the sort of loves of my life in like many, in so many ways. She just was a friend to me when I was a child in a way that only certain special adults can be. And also was a friend of my like mind. She was the first person that told me that she thought I could be a writer. She was the first person that told me, oh, you could be a teacher. You really love texts. Um, Naomi Fry: oh, I Vinson Cunningham: love that. So spoken into me as a child and also, um. Uh, was the first person that I saw really seriously exe a novel. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Vinson Cunningham: Page by page. Line by line. Mm-hmm. Paragraph by paragraph. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Et Vinson Cunningham: cetera, et cetera. And so, um, in her classes over the years of high school, I read Lewis Di Ula. Beloved Song of Solomon. Naomi Fry: That's a lot for, um, Vinson Cunningham: well, I took a senior elective with her, which was about, I took two senior electives with her. Mm-hmm. One was about the work of Morrison and one was about the work of Flannery O'Connor. Naomi Fry: Great pairing. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. It was a great pairing. And, um, that's awesome. You know, it was like in some, on some, one of the beginnings of whatever it is that I do. Alex Schwartz: I Naomi Fry: love that. Alex Alex Schwartz: formative. Mm-hmm. Formative. Um, also in school. In 10th grade, was that for you? The start Vincent 10th grade? Vinson Cunningham: It, it, it, it was precisely 10th grade. Alex Schwartz: Yeah. I think 10th grade is kind of it with, since Vincent is doing a delightful name check, I will delightfully name check my 10th grade English teacher, Catherine Sweat. Um, and this was an American. Literature course, kind of the great American canon and Beloved was the last book that we got to in that canon we had done. You can imagine the um, Scarlet Letter, huckleberry Finn, um, great Gatsby, et cetera, et cetera. And we ended with Beloved. And I think it just, it. It was, I'm trying to find the words to describe that experience of reading both personally and collectively. Um, I went to girls school where a lot of things are felt collectively, like it can, that can be a negative phenomenon, but it can also be really positive phenomenon. Um, Naomi Fry: mass hysteria, Alex Schwartz: anyone? It was, it was, it was like a good, yeah, it was like a good kind of mass hysteria. We were like freaking out about Beloved. Um, it was, it was such an important moment, I think, uh, especially coming after so many. Great white works, um, obviously and great male works and suddenly we were reading this extraordinary thing, beloved. So after that, um, I wanted to read on my own, I have a really distinctive memory of reading Sula on one Yom Kippur while I was fasting also in high school. Oh Naomi Fry: my Alex Schwartz: God. Which is like a crazy way to do anything. so high school. High school was the start. Naomi Fry: Yeah. Alex Schwartz: How about, you know, me, Naomi Fry: for me, college was the start. Alex Schwartz: Mm-hmm. Naomi Fry: College was the start. Uh, because I, I didn't go to, mostly didn't go to high school in America. And so, you know, in Israel we had a different canon. Uh, but in college, in a kind of like s survey, like American literature survey, I read. The Bluest eye. And then later in college I read Beloved. Alex Schwartz: Mm-hmm. Naomi Fry: And you know, much to say and we're gonna say it. Um, but before we do, I just wanna spend a minute talking about this new book that we're also gonna shout out over the course of the episode. It's a book of essays called on morrison, it just came out, by, uh, the critic, an academic Namali, SPEL. Alex Schwartz: And novelist. Naomi Fry: And novelist, yes. Which I think is Alex Schwartz: important. Naomi Fry: That's, and she writes, and she writes about it as well. Alex Schwartz: I just have to say I love the approach that she takes in this book, and I wish more critics would do it to be a kind of companion to the books and to the reading. Because the way that, um, PEL has structured her book, she has an introduction, which is really interesting, um, about the concept of difficulty. In Morrison's writing and her persona, and then she goes through sequentially each of the books with critical essays, but very accessible ones. Vinson Cunningham: and it’s also in its structure this way of opening up texts and announcing your affinity for a writer. One of the things criticism does is that it ties together, maybe this is another way of talking about accessibility, it ties together on the one hand affection and on the other hand analysis, that they actually go hand in hand. It matters that Serpell is a writer, that Morrison was among other things and editor, both of these didactic professions, that are always running in and out of the act of writing itself. So I am a Serpell fan. Naomi Fry: Yeah I enjoyed it very much as well. And I'm, I'm wondering though, just to put a little bit of a finer point on it, do you think. That you guys, that Cpel is arguing in the book that Morrison has been misunderstood by readers, by critics. Alex Schwartz: really interesting question. What she's saying about Morrison is very interesting. She's saying that there, there is a kind of persona around Toni Morrison and around her writing that has to do with difficulty, that has to do with resisting easy interpretation and, um, resisting easy categorization. Toni Morrison, I mean certainly like publicly was mis misunderstood or, or misconstrued many, many times. That's what some of these clips have to do with that. been referring to like one of the most famous Toni Morrison clips that I always, I mean I'm less on social media than I once was, but do recall seeing this many times social media surfacing, um, is a kind of like SmackDown of Charlie Rose from 1998, literally the question he asks her is, can you imagine writing a novel not centered around race? CLIP: Charlie Rose 1998 I bring up this clip because what Pel is talking about is this kind of spiciness around the persona of Morrison. And I think she is making a case that there is something a bit, um, forbidding about getting closer to the work that also is in the work itself. Morrison was, and we'll talk about this, really influenced by modernism and modernism really was about pressing the reader right into subjectivity and experience, where the balance between difficulty of comprehension and ease of comprehension. Is an aesthetic problem that the writer is working through and trying to solve. So I think that this book is both stressing those things, kind of admiring the difficulty mm-hmm. Such as it is, and then offering a hand Yeah. And saying, let's do it together. Like Vincent used the phrase before, um, friend of my mind about mm-hmm. His English teacher, which real heads will know, is a phrase from Beloved. Mm-hmm. A phrase that frankly may bring tears to my eyes even as I say it. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah, Alex Schwartz: but. Isn't that what we want when we read or encounter something so profound and amazing, a friend of our mind? So I do feel like Cpel is, is offering that in the book. And Vinson Cunningham: yeah. And she's also kind of saying, you know, the, the epigraph of the book is critics generally don't associate black people with ideas. Mm-hmm. A quote from Toni Morrison. Mm-hmm. And also early on in the book, she quotes, um. One of the funniest things about Tony Morrison to me is that one of her closest friends with friend Liebowitz and Lebowitz says like, people don't understand or like, give credit enough for how experimental these books are. A lot are ha a lot is happening and people kind of gloss over it because they're interested in sociology, race or other things. So it's just an invitation to address and, uh, engage with the books on the level of ideas. Alex Schwartz: Can we briefly pause on the idea of. If you would've wanted to be at a table with Fran Leitz and Tony Morrison like having a drink, or if that is the most terrifying idea in the world, Vinson Cunningham: I would like to watch a, my dinner with Andre style movie that is about them talking. I don't know if I would want to be at the table. Alex Schwartz: A hundred percent Naomi Fry: agree. Yeah. Yeah. I think if I could like be, you know, with like, um, if they would allow me to just like, sit at the table and be totally silent. Um, so, you know, thinking about Spel and this question of kind of like. Difficulty and accessibility. You know, she has this line here about this book, about her book. She calls it a jazzy twofold goal. To be as demanding and sophisticated as I want to be. And at the same time, accessible. Alex Schwartz: Yes. That's what we wanna do. Naomi Fry: Yes. That's what we wanna do. Alex Schwartz: That's it. That's the dream. Naomi Fry: It's a dream. And I was thinking about this a lot when I was rereading the Bluest Eye, which as I said, I first encountered in college and I remember reading in, in college, so this is like a book from 1970 Morrison's first book. She wrote it over the course of about five years when she was. A single mother to two young boys, uh, working as like an early, young junior editor. Vinson Cunningham: mm-hmm. Naomi Fry: At Random House. It's about a girl. Named Ola whose heart's desire is to be beautiful, which means for her having blue eyes. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Naomi Fry: Right. This is kind of like Pel talks about this. It's a kind of reductive way to talk about the novel. I mean, it's called the Bluest Eye. It is in some ways about this, but it is not just about this because the book is about. Her inability to form a coherent identity under the kind of like structural racism, structural sexism. Her, her role as a young child who's overlooked, bullied, abused the very first lines. Uh, already kind of like give the tale away. What happens with cola is that her father ends up, uh, raping her. She becomes pregnant with his baby. The baby dies. She, you know, completely her psyche, completely shatters. Okay, this is where the book is heading to, and we know this from the very start, and I remember the first time reading this book. And being totally stunned by like, like not knowing what to expect and being completely gut punched by it in a way that felt just very visceral. I was like, okay, this is a work of genius. Like it is undeniable. I'm like, dear, and. Uh, let me just, I'm just gonna read a little thing from here. I mean, there's so many things to read Alex Schwartz: to us. Naomi Fry: I'm gonna read, Alex Schwartz: I so love to be read to. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Naomi Fry: So this is, um, this is Claudia, uh, the narrator, uh, befuddled at, you know. Other girls, other black girls, other white girls, but mostly other black girls. Interest in a kind of like baby doll, like a blue eyed mm-hmm. Blonde baby doll. Um, she says The other dolls, which were supposed to bring me great pleasure, succeeded in doing quite the opposite when I took it to bed. It's hard. Unyielding limbs resisted my flesh. The tapered fingertips on those dimpled hands scratched if in sleep. I turned the bone cold head collided with my own. It was the most uncomfortable, patently aggressive sleeping companion to hold. It was no more rewarding. The starched gauze, or lace on the cotton dress irritated any embrace. I had only one desire to dismember it to see of what it was made. To discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me, adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs, all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow haired, pink skin doll would what? Every girl child treasured. Um, just the kind of. It's feltness of this passage. You know, you can actually imagine it. You can actually imagine. Mm-hmm. The, that, like those fingers, like it's, it's just described so, so beautifully. And I was reading the profile of Morrison that Hilton Als wrote in the new yorker in 2003, Hilton talks about how Morrison says that one of the writers that influenced her, I mean there is the modernist writers, Faulkner and Wolff and so on, she talks about Theodore Dreiser and his social realism, this turn of 20th century kind of like naturalism like this is what it is, these are the forces at play, and I’m going to lay it out to you through an emplotted narrative, right? And it’s interesting how these things come together for Morrison, these modernist techniques, but also the forces of society working on one, and the individual’s engagement with a structure that is set to topple her. Alex Schwartz: Can I ask you guys something about dolls mm-hmm. That that brought to mind? Do you guys know about the Clark Doll tests? Vinson Cunningham: Yes. So Alex Schwartz: I had just gone into this history because I just did a piece about the history of toys mm-hmm. In the United States. And what that immediately makes me think of that passage, um, is the Clark Doll tests were a pair of black psychologists, child development psychologists, studied in the late thirties and forties. Children's self-image, black kid self-image. Vis-a-vis dolls using identical white dolls and black dolls with all the same physionomy, but different pigment to see how the children developed. And all the kids in the test preferred the white dolls and identified them as beautiful. I mean, things that are unsurprising to us now, but it just strikes me that Morrison. Is taking and revising something like, yeah. The Clark Doll test, which was used by the way, um, in Brown v Board of Education in the court's decision. Mm-hmm. The result from this test to show that black kids' self-esteem was getting damaged by Jim Crow, by segregation. Yeah. Um, I just love that Morrison goes to this kind of like, not cold exactly, but sort of scientific. Um, coded moment in examining race and identity in American history and totally revises it. Yeah. In this character's relationship to the doll. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Yeah. And, um, PEL does this really beautiful thing where she says, um, yeah, there is this like sort of, um, psychology of the sort of disinherited, but also what the, the way the book speaks is through its form. What I love about the passage mm-hmm. That you just read, Naomi, is this emphasis on. Dismembering taking apart. Yeah. And that imagery. Yes. The split. The break, absolutely. The absence. Yes. Um, uh, Elle talks about as like erasure and the, the, the way that, um, silences speak is so much a part of the texture of this novel. Naomi Fry: In a minute, we’ll talk about arguably Morrison’s greatest work, “Beloved.” Critics at large from the New Yorker will be right back. :: MIDROLL 1:: We're gonna talk about some other Morrison novels. Vincent, do you wanna go next? Yeah. You've brought another text to share with a class Vinson Cunningham: I have. Naomi Fry: Which one is it? Vinson Cunningham: I Alex Schwartz: love our seminar. Vinson Cunningham: I know it is the 90 92 novel jazz, which it's funny like, you know, I, Morrison is one of those writers who I kind of purposely was like, okay, I've read half of these and I'm gonna. Maybe litter the rest of them throughout the rest of my, I don't know, middle age, I don't know. And one day I was at a party and, uh, jazz with, its. Purple and Green Spine. Great cover. Great cover was gleaming from one of the bookshelves in this house. And I was like, it's time, you know, just like from having seen it in this, it called Naomi Fry: to you? Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. In this like serendipitous way. Um, jazz tells the story of, um, a man named Joe Trace, his wife Violet Trace, and uh, a young woman named DOAs who in a similar. Strategy to what you just mentioned about Blue Eye. Mm-hmm. The tragedy of these people is unfolded for you within the first paragraph. Joe, yeah. Has had an affair with the young 19-year-old Dorcas. It lasted for three months and when ends, he can't take it, and so therefore he goes and he kills her. And Violet. Uh, the spurned wife, uh, attends the funeral, deface the corpse by stabbing it, and then just kind of collapses in the middle of a Harlem Street. Naomi Fry: and this all happens on the, Vinson Cunningham: this is, this is told to us in advance. In advance. Then we later we get It's like two pages. Yeah. Yeah. Later we get, but Naomi Fry: at the Vinson Cunningham: very beginning, all of the vantages that lead up to it. Mm-hmm. But it's told to us at the beginning and told is important for jazz because to me, the brilliance of jazz. Is in its narration. And I wanted to talk about this book today because, um, when I read this book, I was like, yeah, this is why anyone would write fiction. Um, it is told to us by this narrator who the first word of the book is the, like semi unpronounceable, like a, a, a teeth suck. Uh, spelled STHI know this woman. Um, and we are never given to know exactly who this narrator is, who sometimes speaks in the first person, the, the confidence and serendipity and to, you know, reference the title, the improvisation of this mm-hmm. Narrator figure. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Um, has been haunting me since I read this book. And also, it's a book that is set in New York and I love. Writing about New York. Can I read you a passage? Alex Schwartz: Yes. Ah, please heaven. Vinson Cunningham: This is the I. The I here is the narrator who is just kind of flitting in and out. Tells you dispenses details, has a ki weird kind of omniscience that seems like it's pasted together by various like tabloid news reports, whatever. But then all of a sudden the scenario starts to sing. I'm crazy about this city. Daylight slants like a razor cutting the buildings in half. In the top half I see looking faces and it's not easy to tell which are people, which the work of stone masons below is shadow where any blase thing takes place. Clarinets and lovemaking fists in the voices of sorrowful women. A city like this one makes me dream tall and feel in on things hep. It's the bright steel. Rocking above the shade below that does it. When I look over strips of green grass lining the river at church steeples and into the cream and copper halls of apartment buildings, I'm strong alone, yes, but topnotch and indestructible like the city in 1926 when all the wars are over and there will never be another one. The people down there in the shadow are happy about that. At last. At last everything's ahead. So just this, just God incredible. Yeah. Song like announcement, um, and. You can see how the narrator in fiction, which is like really what fiction is about, you know, and, uh, PEL talks about, uh, this being a, a work of, it's the most experimental of, uh, Morrison's works. And it is kind of, um, on some level you can think of the narrator being the book itself. It's about this concept that is. Ever present in black aesthetics of the, the talking book. Henry Lewis Gates talks about this and mm-hmm. Sopel cites him. Um, what does, Naomi Fry: what does that mean exactly? Vinson Cunningham: The idea that a book in its power, you know, and, and you could connect this to the, um, the sort of, uh, prohibition against, uh, reading among slaves and, and. Encountering literacy on one's own and feeling that the book is talking to oneself. Frederick Douglass, um, in his, uh, the narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass talks about him learning sort of on the sly how to read, um, when he is, uh, briefly in Baltimore, and how this sort of companionate relationship develops between himself. Mm-hmm. And the book Unmediated by Masters and other Yeah. Sociological factors. All of a sudden there's this pure channel of. Connection and, and communication. And this narrator's able to be one person. It might be a neighbor, but it's, it can also be a whole host of people like a city, you know? Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Vinson Cunningham: And it's one of the most pleasurable reading experiences of my adult life. Oh, that's amazing. It, it's the best book I, I read in my thirties, I guess. Um, uh, you know, I don't, I'm not bit much of a list maker, but I think it probably is. And, uh, for me it's the, it's just, Naomi Fry: I haven’t read Jazz. that's gonna be my next book. You guys great. Vinson Cunningham: It's brilliant. And just, you know. It has one of the, I don't know, bluntest, but also most psychologically like ravishing zips back in time that I've ever, I was like, where am I? It's 18 what? And then we come to understand where we are in the most kind of unsatisfying, unresolved. Way, which, you know, part of it is a meditation on, not, it's jazz is not jazz. The music is not part of the content of the book. It is a little bit, but it really is a, an announcement of the strategy of the book, which is like all yeah, just like this constant improvisation that, um, speaks to a culture and a music, but also a way of life. Naomi Fry: I mean, the idea of a lack of satisfaction. Of a lack of closure. Yeah. Right. I mean, that is a very modernist thing as well. And just to go back to the bluest eye, it ends famously with, um, cola. Completely, you know, psychically shattered looking at herself in the mirror and you know, she's gone insane. And this complete rive is this complete fragmentation. It is a satisfying and only in the sense that, um. It, it, there, there can be no satisfying end. Yeah. If that makes sense. Yeah. I mean that is the whole point. Yeah. Um, that this shattering is the point. Vinson Cunningham: And I, I think this is like important too. Just I'm, I, I don't wanna drag us too long, but it's important too because just in terms of literary history, you can think of. Tony Morrison as like the latest modernist. Naomi Fry: Yes. Vinson Cunningham: You know, someone who, to the extent that these strategies will survive into the 21st century that Morrison was writing like this in the 1990s when there's a bunch of other kinds of realism around other. Other things are in the air, you know, Raymond Carver and other people have already Yeah. Kind of picked up the Hemingway thread or whatever, which I, I'm not denigrating, it's a different thing here. Morrison is still, um, looking back not only to American modernism, but also to, you know, Latin Americans, realism, other strategies. Um, keeping them alive, keeping the current and fresh. Fresh. Alex Schwartz: And I think it might be worth saying even one further thing about. Why that might be, if I may just enter, enter into the realm of literary speculation for a second. Because what I Naomi Fry: please, Alex Schwartz: I love modernism. I find modernism to be exhilarating. Um, some of my favorite books are modernist books and, um, I think it's worth asking what purpose modernism served in its creation. And I'm thinking back to early 20th Century Wolf, Joyce, et cetera. And. For me, one of the greatest, most beautiful literary ideas is Virginia Wolf's idea of catching the atoms as they fall. Mm-hmm. Catching, catching experience as it is experienced and as it is felt in language. And so I think that's such a huge part of Tony Morrison's. Project. Here's how it is, here's how it feels. Here's who we are, here's who I am. Here's the conflict in the we. You know, Morrison was really conscious of, and as we've talked about and being asked all the time about writing as a black woman representing black experience, and I think one of her answers to that was to say it's about subjectivity, it's about character. It's about breaking down, um, a bigger category into. The way that life is and life happens. Yeah. Yeah. Press you close. Come inside the Naomi Fry: way it feels. Alex Schwartz: Yeah. Naomi Fry: Yeah. Alex Schwartz: Which kind of brings me around to the book that I wanna discuss. Mm. Naomi Fry: Okay. Alex, come on down. Alex Schwartz: Here I am. The price is right for me. Um, Naomi Fry: which book did you choose for us today? Alex Schwartz: Well, I chose Beloved from 1987. Um, and. Before my reread of Beloved, this time, I read an introduction that Morrison had written to Beloved after its publication. And in her introduction, she talks about having just quit her job at Random House. Okay, so let's, let's coming back into like her history. Toni Morrison comes to Random House and does a lot of really interesting and important work at Random House publishes many black writers, advocates for their work. Um, really builds up a very impressive stable of writers. And then at some point Leaves. And Beloved is the first book she writes after she leaves. And in her introduction. Too Beloved, later written, she writes about freedom, about feeling free. Mm-hmm. For the first time about she was living along the Hudson River, upstate from New York City, looking out at the river, not owing her time, her children were grown up. She didn't owe her time to anyone, and what she describes is a woman walking out of the Hudson River water towards her with a fancy hat, beloved. The character kind of coming to her as a visitation and Beloved is a ghost story. Naomi Fry: Yes. Tell us about Beloved Alex Schwartz: guys. I'm gonna tell you something. There's a reason this book is very famous. 'cause this book is very good. Vinson Cunningham: That's disastrously good. It's Alex Schwartz: so freaking good. I, um, I just gobbled it up and the woman sitting next to me in the coffee shop as I finished, you know, I had tears in my eyes, the whole thing. And she just said, is that your first time? And I was like, no. Okay. I moved again. I moved all over again. It Vinson Cunningham: happened again. Alex Schwartz: Yeah. I'm not, it happened again. Naomi Fry: Can't believe how many tears we, we have on this, in this episode. Alex Schwartz: Tears are good. What is the point if we can't get to the feelings? Mm-hmm. Let's, let's go right to it. The mind, the heart, all of it. OK So Beloved starts with a number one. 24 was spiteful, which. I think is one of the greatest opening lines of any book ever. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Alex Schwartz: You don't know what it means that is important. You may not know what it means for a few pages, and so already you are actively engaged in trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Yeah. Yeah. And what and where you are and where you are is in a house, in a town in Ohio. After the Civil War, after slavery has ended, and you are with a family, a family of women. Seth is the matriarch of the family. She lives there with her timid and very unworldly, 18 ish, year old daughter Denver. We know that she has two sons who have left home as soon as they could at the age of 13, and we start to realize very early on that this house is haunted. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Alex Schwartz: It's haunted by the ghost of a baby. And the baby ghost does a lot of weird stuff. The baby ghost knocks over chairs. The baby ghost like is a pain in the ass. The baby ghost is bothering everybody. Naomi Fry: Baby, baby, baby. Angry Alex Schwartz: baby. Angry baby angry is bothering everybody. This ghost is not leaving 1 24 spiteful. We're in a haunted story and into the mix of this. Shows up One day, a man named Paul D. Paul d and Seth were enslaved together at a place called Sweet Home, a plantation in Kentucky 20 years before. And Paul D is coming to reenter her life and they begin a relationship. But pretty soon, the baby ghost who's been kicked outta the house, when Paul de arrives, that ghost comes back in embodied form. And here is the spoiler of all spoilers. Beloved is the child who Seth the killed years before, during the time of slavery, when the plantation owner, named school teacher comes to Hunter down after her escape. Seth that tries to kill all of her children, but manages only to succeed in killing Beloved. And now, 20 years later, beloved has come back to reunite and also haunt mm-hmm. Her family. So this book is so extraordinary in so many ways. It's an amazing act of imagination. Um, for all the reasons you can just immediately tell it's taking certain genre reforms. And I really like the way that Spel talks about this too, about it being a ghost story. Um, she also talked about something that had not occurred to me, which is that ghost stories and like supernatural stories were really popular in a. The eighties, like when Mar was publishing, I was like, oh, that wasn't something I was thinking about at Vinson Cunningham: all. Yeah. It's a, yeah. Publishing trend. Alex Schwartz: Yeah. Yeah. Like a publishing trend, but like, you know, make it, make it hugely, yeah. Naomi Fry: The supernatural. Alex Schwartz: Yeah. Meaningful. I Naomi Fry: was thinking it's not that exactly, but like I was thinking of like the and rice novels, you know? Exactly. It's like mm-hmm. Those, all of those kind of like pulpy Alex Schwartz: Totally. Yeah. Naomi Fry: Paperbacks. Yeah. Alex Schwartz: She's taking that, she's taking the American Gothic and she's taking also slave narratives. Mm-hmm. Which were, uh, er, um, PEL calls it a neos slave narrative. Mm-hmm. That coming into reinhabiting, the, the experience of slavery. But one thing, so there's so many things I love about this book. I will say that I think the characterizations in this novel are among the best in. Literature period. These people feel real to me. Like trees who have their roots so deep Yeah. In the ground that they have come to us really embody. They're the opposite of ghosts in some ways. Mm-hmm. Like the way that Morrison Achieves presence is really incredible. Um, the other thing about this book, so it's a conjuring also because it's based on a true story, it's based on the story of a enslaved woman who did exactly this. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Alex Schwartz: And. One fascinating thing is this instance of the murder, the child murder happens pretty much right in the middle of the book, but when you start the book, it's happened. You're living in the aftermath, right? Mm-hmm. You're living in the aftermath of slavery also. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Alex Schwartz: You're living in a very protected, very limited, very small space that Setha has made for herself. The world is shut out and when Paul D comes, he brings in something that in the book is called Rememory, the recurrence and Recurrence and Recurrence of certain Lived things, and how they cannot be stamped out no matter what. Mm-hmm. Seth might try to do or try to think. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Alex Schwartz: Um, and so the book is about. Exposure to memory, exposure to the past, and then how you can possibly take these things as you continue to live into the future. And if you can. Vinson Cunningham: In many ways right, I mean, it seems to me like these incredibly powerful symbols of what it means to live in a sort of generational or like ancient, um, relationship to a very important past, right? That, you know, in the same way that when you're a child, you know that there is this. Absolutely important, but irretrievable relationship to what happened before I was born. Naomi Fry: Yes. Vinson Cunningham: You know, and that this is part of your everlasting attracting attraction to your parents because Yeah, the past is so important to you. It produced to you, but you can't touch it. Um, you know, I, you know, I've said jazz is my favorite, but it does seem to me that Beloved is the great cathedral. Yeah. You know, it just, it's such a great work of construction Naomi Fry: in a minute. How do we square Tony Morrison, the icon with the writer We know on the page. Critics at Arch from the New Yorker will be right back. :: MIDROLL 2:: I just wanna zoom out for a second and, you know, now that we've closely read some of, uh, Morrison's Greatest Works, can we like, think about it a little more broadly and talk about what. It was Morrison's project, you know, based on these kind of like more close readings. Vinson Cunningham: It, I mean, it's so hard to say because Naomi Fry: of the like Yeah. I mean that's a, this Vinson Cunningham: is a big Naomi Fry: ask, Vinson Cunningham: but yeah. The, the like diversity and the fertility of the works. But I do think that there is something that we've been circling a while in this discussion of form and aesthetic and, um, and modernism. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Vinson Cunningham: Uh, which is an insistence on being on the front lines of consciousness and experience. It seems to me. Mm-hmm. And, um, doing that with a certain freedom that of course talks about politics and of course talks about race and circumstance and situation and, um, uh, certain forms of underclass life and certain kinds of fugitive status. On the case of maybe, uh, uh, Seth and Beloved, um. To insist that there are depths of experience Naomi Fry: mm-hmm. Vinson Cunningham: And reasoned interaction with the things of the world that are happening everywhere. Naomi Fry: Yeah. Vinson Cunningham: You know, um, one of the interesting things, um, and just to go really quickly back to Chappelle's book, um, she talks a lot about the use of free indirect speech or close third person as a, in Morrison and as, as an interaction between utter subjectivity. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Vinson Cunningham: But a kind of. Enlightenment, rationality, reason dispassion. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Vinson Cunningham: And she's saying Naomi Fry: yes. Vinson Cunningham: Um, no. You can't lean on one or the other. They're always Yes. Being. Put together. Yeah. And so in Morrison, it's, that's always happening on a level of like, the paragraph. Naomi Fry: Yeah. Vinson Cunningham: Like, here's the sociological, uh, tone. Yeah. And here is the utterly like gut bucket, blues based personal tone. And she's always being like, super subjective. They, they accompany one another. Mm-hmm. So that like relationship to experience to me seems to be like what is always like constantly knocking on my door when I read this stuff. Naomi Fry: Yeah. Alex Schwartz: Yeah. I would say, um, that the Morrison project is. To put black life, and particularly the life of black women at the very center of literature, but to do it in a way that is true to character and to human experience rather than, um, sociologically or politically representative. And it's a project that I think. Every great writer who is seen as being representative of a community has to wrestle with and deal with, whether it's like a Philip Roth getting letters from. Middle class Jews saying, how dare you? You've betrayed our people. You're embarrassing us. You're embarrassing us. Yeah. Naomi Fry: Yeah. It's the dirty laundry. It's Alex Schwartz: like, you're, you're, you're, yeah. They're not supposed to know. What are you doing? Um, why Naomi Fry: are Alex Schwartz: you, yeah, yeah. Why are you making us look bad? Uh, I've seen similar reactions to Morrison lately on social media, which I find really fascinating. 'cause it means she's working. It means like it's working basically. Naomi Fry: Interesting. What, what kind, Alex Schwartz: I've, I've just seen a kind of like, this is not a flattering portrait of black womanhood. Mm-hmm. This is, this is not. Elevating this is, you know, there because people and the people she's writing about are damaged, are greedy, are jealous, are sad, are whatever it might be. And also cruel mean. Yeah. And also are are Vinson Cunningham: rapist and murderers. Alex Schwartz: Exactly. Exactly. Yes. And also are. Generous and loving and heard and, and trying to heal and all the rest of it. So that is, yeah, that, I think that is her project. She writes, um, in her introduction to Ula, her novel, her wonderful novel, Soula, she writes something that struck me as very interesting. Mm-hmm. I'm just gonna get it and share it with you guys. She says, in the fifties, when I was a student, the embarrassment of being called a politically minded writer was so acute. The fear of critical derision for channeling one's creativity toward the state of of social affairs so profound. It made me wonder why the panic, the flight from any accusation of revealing an awareness of the political world in one's fiction turned my attention to the source of the panic and the means by which writers sought to ease it. So she's basically saying that in the fifties when she's starting to think about these things. To be seen as having a political agenda was to be seen as being kind of bankrupt as an artist. Mm-hmm. That you were just trying to get a message into your work. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Alex Schwartz: Um, but that there was no way for a black female writer to not be seen as political because her whole identity was politicized. Just the fact that she was not a white man was itself made representatives. So she goes, she goes on to write, um, if Phyllis, if Phyllis Wheatley wrote, the sky is blue, the critical question was, what could blue sky mean to a black slave woman? If Jean Tur wrote. The iron is hot. The question was how accurately or poorly he expressed chains of servitude. So she's writing about early in her career trying to get free of this, like how to get free of these assumptions that are coming with her, how to, how to break through and just make her art and. This is always a question with Morrison. A really interesting thing happened when Beloved came out, uh, it was nominated for the National Book Award. It did not win the National Book Award, and a group of black writers wrote a really angry letter basically saying, how dare you mm-hmm. To the National Book Award. Um, this is, this is an act of whimsy that you haven't chosen this book, you haven't recognized the accomplishment. Everyone else sees how important this is. Mm-hmm. What are you doing? What the, the National Book Award that year went to a book I've. Never heard of, I'm sorry to that man who, who wrote it also, the counter life was passed over and then of course she won the Pulitzer Prize and then she won the Nobel. So very quickly that whole question of recognition was reversed. And I feel like, certainly not overnight, but Morrison went from being in this position of being like negatively politicized, like marginalized to being, for lack of a better term, like positively politicized made representative. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Alex Schwartz: Um. And that's a huge burden and a huge weight to create work under. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah, it is a huge burden and it does have something to do with maybe like historicizing her in the 20th century, you know, like, um. In the fifties and sixties, you had all these, uh, black writers. You could, you think about Baldwin, you think about Richard Wright, um, uh, in certain ways, Zora Hurston or Ralph Ellison, who kind of were coming out of the Har Harlem Renaissance period are, are writing through the Cold War. Jesse McCarthy wrote a really wonderful book and he periodize this as the blue period in black literature. so these works are more influenced or more sort of insistent on the, um, what Jesse sometimes calls. I think the, the black interior, not shunning politics, but, but um, sort of playing a counter melody with it by an emphasis on the inside. How, how, how life feels. Um, so Morrison, you know, her ear, this is what I think she means by saying, when I was younger, it was frowned upon to just like look directly at politics. Mm-hmm. Um, but on the other hand. The, the, that the letter, um, that New York Times letter, uh, which is called Black Writers and Praise of Toni Morrison, is totally a product of the next period. You call it the Black Arts Movement. You know, so some of the signatories are a Mary Barack, uh, June Jordan. Other folks who have said no to that, Naomi Fry: did not, did not sign the letter. Right. Vinson Cunningham: Ellison? Yeah. Is mortified by the letter. Yeah. He's like, what are you talking about? Yeah. Uh, people, Naomi Fry: it was like, Tony doesn't need Vinson Cunningham: this, right? You don't need identity as a marker of, of greatness, et cetera, et cetera. So she's in between these two things, it seems to me. Yeah. And cannot be fully encapsulated by either. Naomi Fry: I think the question we're circling around with this talk about like. What does a writer represent? And I, this is a question that Sir Pell is talking about, especially in the conclusion to her book, which is called On Monuments, and she is talking about how in 2017, Princeton, where. Uh, Morrison taught for a long time, decided to rename a building after her, and she in a kind of like humorous diva move step steps up to the podium to accept this honor and says, I'm not humbled, you know. Then she joked about the mouthfeel of Morrison Hall. Sounds good, doesn't it? The more I say it or murmur it, the more natural and even inevitable it seems. So that's of course, funny, but also kind of like, yeah, I deserve this. I'm pretty good. I'm, I'm more than pretty good. I'm the best. Right? So, and Spel says, Toni Morrison was not a verse to monuments. She was a diva. She knew the worth of her work and was unabashed about being honored for it. Right. But then, um, Serpa goes on to. To talk about Morrison's own relationship to monuments. And very interestingly, and I wasn't aware of it, um, about kind of like her rejection of the notion of taking down Confederate monuments. Um, she said about this, the conversation about monuments, the ones that ought to be blown up and the ones that ought to be revered. I don't like that. I don't wanna get rid of a monument. Because the guy was mean or bad or stupid, we'll just find out about it. It can stay there. I don't like the destruction. I don't like G erasure. So I thought that was extremely interesting. And then Pel kind of thinks about that binary, um, in our rush to monumentalize her, to make her a palatable icon of black wisdom or black joy or black excellence. I fear we may inadvertently veil or shroud her. With beautifying or burnt edges sheets after all, to tear down a monument figure and to prettify it are not our only options. What do you guys think about that? Vinson Cunningham: Yeah, it is, it's a, it's a, it's a delicate dance, right? Because mm-hmm. I don't think it's overblown to say that civilization depends on a certain kind of monumentalizing. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Vinson Cunningham: Urge Yeah. That, you know, uh, in order to make sense of the group, in this case being like the human species. Naomi Fry: Yeah. Vinson Cunningham: Um, we have to find exceptional examples of our species and say, this was good. Naomi Fry: Yes. Vinson Cunningham: You know, this Naomi Fry: was, and this can show us the way Vinson Cunningham: and this is still, and Yes. And to, and to one way to talk about a monument, even like in the, uh, logic of urban planning is to say, well, what does it mean to come up to the statue? Not yesterday, but today that a monument makes us think about the contemporary and its connections to the past in a kind of ongoing way, On the other hand, there is a kind of, if you encounter Morrison, um, more through the clip. something that is, that's more about kind of wisdom or like snappy comebacks or et cetera. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Vinson Cunningham: Shade, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. And it doesn't, and it doesn't keep pushing you back to the, you know, back to the sources. Um, there's a danger in that too. And so this stuff always exists on a continuum. Right now at the Museum of Contemporary Art in, um, Los Angeles, there is a, um. There's an exhibition called Monuments, um, co-curated by Kara Walker, who it comes up in on Morrison. and it's all about, um, taboo. Imagery, including monuments, um, confederate mon monuments and other, and others, and seeing how we can sort of intervene and play with and, and mess them up. It almost seems to me like we need to continually be doing that even to the. Quote unquote positive monuments always like testing them, like knocking on them to say, does still work? Still work? Are we still corresponding to the actual and not to an attitude a, a gesture, et cetera. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Vinson Cunningham: Um, so I think that's healthy. Yeah. You know, and books like this, Chappelle's insistence on, as we've all mentioned, being Yeah, super rigorous, but also very accessible. Efforts like this, keep us in contact with those sources so that we don't let them just sort of turn into mirror. Signs. Alex Schwartz: This talk is reminding me of a new book of Morrison's. Essays are really lectures that's out right now, um, which I read earlier this week called Languages, liberation Reflections on the American Cannon. It's cool because it takes you into the lectures and her kind of like lecture notes that she gave. Mm-hmm. But I do find it funny that it's title is Languages Liberation, because that's like, again, it's this kind of, and I get why like I hope it sells many copies, but it's this kind of great, this positive. Yeah, this positive idea of language can take us there. We can be our own liberation. And then you open the book and it's full of dense, difficult, thorny ideas and analyses that had me kind of being like, okay, I gotta go, I gotta go back to Benito Serino. Like, I gotta get back into the tax guys. Um, it's not the kind of graduation day message that maybe you'd expect. And I do think that there, there is an effort to position Morrison in this way as a wise elder. Um, and guess what? She was a wise elder by the time she died. Like, well earned. I get it. Right. But I think the saving grace here, um. That leads away from that character hover, like comforting or, or, um, useful it might be is that you go right back to the books. Like, that's why I'm fired up right now. Naomi Fry: Yeah, Alex Schwartz: because you go right back to the books and if like, like look, I love that Charlie Rose clip who doesn't, now. Parrot it with one of the amazing books she wrote. Naomi Fry: Yeah. Alex Schwartz: And we're great. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Alex Schwartz: That's my recommendation. To myself also. Naomi Fry: I mean for me, you know, rereading the Bluest eye and now hopefully going into some of the other books, I think there is a comfort and a relief in difficulty to know that there is another person you know of great, great talents. Who reaffirms to you that things are very complicated. Alex Schwartz: Hmm. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Naomi Fry: You know? Alex Schwartz: Absolutely. I love that point, Nomi. Naomi Fry: Yeah. And I, Alex Schwartz: I think that's so wise. Think Naomi Fry: and also, and I think I am a wise elder myself. Alex Schwartz: Absolutely. Yeah. And also, um, if I may just add on one thing that you just made me think of. We've talked on the show about books that provide a kind of very, like frictionless pleasure. Mm-hmm. Like we've talked about romantic, we've talked about mm-hmm. The kind of just gobble it up reading. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Alex Schwartz: What a pleasure. Like in the same way to feel your body working on challenge, to feel your mind come alive. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Alex Schwartz: Nothing better than that. Naomi Fry: Nothing better. That's Vinson Cunningham: the whole point. Naomi Fry: This has been critics at large. Alex Barish is our consulting editor, and Rhiannon Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer, Steven Valentino, Alexis Quadra, composed our theme music and we had engineering help today from pr Bandi. With mixing by Mike Kuman next week, you can hear our live event at the 92nd Street Y and finally, know what we all think about Emerald Fennell's new adaptation of Withering Heights. If you miss this in person, join us for that on the pod, and as always, you can find every episode of our show at New yorker.com/critics. We'll see you next week.