Review of Toni Morrison's "Song of Solomon"

[The above is mostly a reading of the text below, with an occasional aside thrown in for good measure, as they strike me as relevant.  I welcome questions, comments, or concerns about the material contained in this video.]

It’s been too many years since I’ve read Toni Morrison (“Paradise,” which was wonderful and “Sula,” which I don’t remember much about at all).  This one brought back to the fore everything that I loved about “Paradise” all over again. 

“Song of Solomon” tells the story of Macon (“Milkman”) Dead (far from the only peculiar name you’ll see encounter in this book), the son of a loveless marriage and an overbearing, despotic father, also named Macon.  Morrison presents the reader with a wide cast of characters early in the novel, all fully drawn out, but refuses to hint at which ones you should be following most closely.  There’s Macon Sr.’s sister, Pilate; her daughter, Rebecca; and Rebecca’s daughter, Hagar, all of whose names point directly to the kind of mythical, grand storytelling that Morrison is so invested in.  Not even the Nobel Committee could escape the language of myth when mentioning her in their citation: “The Solomon of the title, the southern ancestor, was to be found in the songs of childhood games.  His inner intensity had borne him back, like Icarus, through the air to the Africa of his roots.  This insight finally becomes Milkman’s too.”

The action is centered around Milkman’s coming of age, and slightly resembles a Bildungsroman, though it’s so much richer and fuller than anything that word could connote.  The novel is full of disintegrating, rotting relationships – between Ruth and Macon Sr., Pilate and Macon Sr., Milkman and his erstwhile best friend Guitar, and Milkman and his girlfriend Hagar.  Without giving away too much, Milkman’s journey sets him on a path where he ends up learning about the circumstances of his own birth and his ancestors.

This was a spectacular novel, convincing me still again that Toni Morrison is a kind of American Homer, full of allegory and origins, an undiluted rhapsode always pushing for a deeper and more expansive and prophetic evaluation of our roots, our identities, and our borders.  As often as she’s called a black writer, an African-American writer, a woman writer (that especially grating nineteenth-century appellation that rings of male condescension), she seems like none of these to me.  She is American – as widely and deeply American as any of the other novelists who come before her. 

This is a truly impressive piece of work, and a wonderful place to start if you’re unfamiliar with Morrison’s oeuvre.