[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.
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