January 18: I thought I had arrived, until I read Toni Morrison

That title is an overstatement, and click-baity. But it's close to the truth. 

I am not new to writing fiction, even literary fiction. But I recently finished The Bluest Eye, one of Toni Morrison's earlier novels, and it took my breath away. I can't even explain why fully, so her powers of literature are and will always be beyond mine  Or I should say, since she has passed away, that my powers will never come close to hers.

Yes, the book is brutal and raw.  Too much? Well, I don't know if I am in a position to say that about her depiction of a homely African American eleven-year-old girl growing up in Lorain, Ohio, a real town near Cleveland situated on Lake Erie.  How much more symbolic can you get for a cold society. I shiver just sitting here, thinking about it, and it's only 45 degrees outside in North Georgia. And cold is an image in the book, along with so much more. 

Pecola is a victim not just of her callous and uncaring parents and over poverty but of the racial categories and view of beauty. She wants blue eyes like white girls because little white girls are considered pretty and she is not.  Her desire for blue eyes leads to madness, but not after many other events. It is the last straw, perhaps, but also her driving desire because her deepest need is to be loved and accepted, which seems only to come from the three prostitutes who live upstairs from their former storefront home.  The story is told through multiple points of view, the main one (not a reliable narrator but at least grounded and not overly unreliable) being that of two sisters who go to school with her. 

I decided to read it through in as close to a couple of sittings as possible.  I will have to read it again as literature; the first reading was just to understand the surface goings-on of the story.  When that will happen, I don't know. Life has other demands. 

Morrison's command of vocabulary, by which I mean more words and more creative ways to use them, exceeds mine, and I would hope to have her ability to empathize with characters, even the despicable ones. What I cannot do is dive under the real lives of Black people, different ones, to express the pain and sometimes despair they feel, at least then, in a country with our history.  

I am also reading a book I didn't know existed until last week.  It is Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl , an autobiography or memoir by Harriet Jacobs (pseudonym Linda Brent) published during the Civil War.  A fitting companion to Morrison, it is hard to put down although very much written in the sentimental style of the mid-19th century women's books.

When I read it again I will perhaps be qualified to write intelligently about The Bluest Eye. Will I read other books by Morrison? I don't know.  Sometimes less is more. She does write a very honest postscript in the edition I used, where she points out things she wish she had done differently in the book. That is brave; I read a good bit and have never seen that before, at least not so direct. 

Do I recommend the book? Only for those who are willing to open their minds and emotions to it.