“The Bluest Eye” (1970), Ms. Morrison’s debut novel, was published as she approached her 40th birthday, and it became an enduring classic. It centered on Pecola Breedlove, a poor black girl of 11 who is disconsolate at what she perceives as her ugliness. Ms. Morrison said that she wrote the book because she had encountered no other one like it — a story that delved into the life of a child so infected by racism that she had come to loathe herself.
“She had seen this little girl all of her life,” reads a description of Pecola. “Hair uncombed, dresses falling apart, shoes untied and caked with dirt. They had stared at her with great uncomprehending eyes. Eyes that questioned nothing and asked everything. Unblinking and unabashed, they stared up at her. The end of the world lay in their eyes, and the beginning, and all the waste in between.”
August 6, 2019
"Toni Morrison, Nobel laureate who transfigured American literature, dies at 88."
WaPo reports.
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«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 203 of 203One more thing on Beloved, which I do admire despite its derivativeness. Admire, though not really enjoy. It's a good hard book for teaching to literature students, right alongside Faulkner, because there's nothing wrong with considering authors' influence on each other. .
My mentor and dear friend, the southern historian Elizabeth Fox Genovese, wrote an extraordinary essay placing Beloved within current and historical debates about the civil war and the South. One might find the essay interesting enough to want to read the book. Such essays are rare.
It's called Unspeakable Things Unspoken. I wouldn't know how to access it, having been purged from academia decades ago. A mitzvah.
@Tina.
I agree about you on O'Hara. I think he was a great writer. He was able to keep on writing in his 50's and 60's because he stopped drinking for health reasons. The Boozer really takes its toll on writers when they get older. If it doesn't outright kill them.
Never read O'Hara, but yeah, Updike. He spoke on my campus about a year before he died, took questions--even badly phrased and snarky ones--seriously, and stayed to sign books.
It pissed me off to see goobers with armloads for him to sign; geez, pick a favorite!
Narr
So rude
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