Toni Morrison’s Love
Begin: 03/22/07
End: 03/25/07
Quality: Nine Out of Ten.
Reason: Unread. Morrison. Reading Plan.
Genre: Fiction. African-American Literature.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 2003.
Fog Index:8.1/85% are harder.
Flesch Index: 72.4/86% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 6.1/86% are harder.
Complex Words: 8%/82% have more complex words.
Number: First.
Ms. Morrison, would you marry me?
Please?
I love this woman. This woman is so fucking amazing. She just blows me away. Seriously, just blows me little brain away. And that’s saying something because I read quite a bit. And I can honestly say that I have very few writers that I would put up their with Morrison. Her stories are just so damn rich. The sheer lyricism of her prose so dense with power and meaning. The depth and gravity of her characters vibrant. I want to have her love child. Okay. Let me pause in my brown nosing for a moment to actually talk about the story and what it was that I got out of it.
It is, like many of Ms. Morrison’s stories, an interwoven tale. It’s a complicated tale with various perspectives and angles. It concerns the people around Bill Cosey, especially the women. The two major characters are Heed and Christine. They were once close friends but have since become bitter rivals and now live together in Cosey’s mansion. Then Junior enters the picture. She is hired by Heed to serve as Heed’s assistant. The story then begins to unfold both backwards and forwards as Ms. Morrison begins to weave her spell. We discover the history of Bill Cosey and the women in his life as well as the continuing events in the seaside town.
I got so much out of this novel but not a lot that I can actually coherently explain or verbalize.
Like every other novel that Ms. Morrison has written, this one left me feeling upbeat and positive while still tasting the bitter and the sad. I don’t really have much else to say at this point other than this book really got me thinking about a lot of issues and that it renewed my undying love for Ms. Morrison.
Here’s a quote I stole from oprah.com. It’s by Ms. Morrison about love.
"The idea of a wanton woman is something I have inserted into almost all of my books," Ms. Morrison said. "An outlaw figure who is disallowed in the community because of her imagination or activity or status—that kind of anarchic figure has always fascinated me. And the benefits they bring with them, in spite of the fact that they are either dismissed or upbraided—something about their presence is constructive in the long run. Sula, for instance, was someone the other characters missed terribly when she was gone, even though she was the pariah. In Love, Junior is a poor, rootless, free-floating young woman—a survivor, a manipulator, a hungry person—but she does create a space where people can come with their better selves."
She said she was alarmed when she realized the title of this book might be Love, but the fact of her alarm was so interesting to her, it kept her from dismissing the idea. "It is easily the most empty cliché, the most useless word, and at the same time the most powerful human emotion—because hatred is involved in it, too. I thought if I removed the word from nearly every other place in the manuscript, it could become an earned word. If I could give the word, in my very modest way, its girth and its meaning and its terrible price and its clarity at the moment when that is all there is time for, then the title does work for me."
And this is a quote from the book.
“I’ve come to believe every family has a Dark and needs one. All over the world, traitors help progress. It’s like being exposed to tuberculosis. After it fills the cemetery, it strengthens whoever survices; helps them know the difference between a strong mind and a healthy one; between the righteous and the right- which is,after all, progress. The problem for those left alive is what to do about revenge- how to escape the sweetness of its rot.” (139)
Begin: 03/22/07
End: 03/25/07
Quality: Nine Out of Ten.
Reason: Unread. Morrison. Reading Plan.
Genre: Fiction. African-American Literature.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 2003.
Fog Index:8.1/85% are harder.
Flesch Index: 72.4/86% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 6.1/86% are harder.
Complex Words: 8%/82% have more complex words.
Number: First.
Ms. Morrison, would you marry me?
Please?
I love this woman. This woman is so fucking amazing. She just blows me away. Seriously, just blows me little brain away. And that’s saying something because I read quite a bit. And I can honestly say that I have very few writers that I would put up their with Morrison. Her stories are just so damn rich. The sheer lyricism of her prose so dense with power and meaning. The depth and gravity of her characters vibrant. I want to have her love child. Okay. Let me pause in my brown nosing for a moment to actually talk about the story and what it was that I got out of it.
It is, like many of Ms. Morrison’s stories, an interwoven tale. It’s a complicated tale with various perspectives and angles. It concerns the people around Bill Cosey, especially the women. The two major characters are Heed and Christine. They were once close friends but have since become bitter rivals and now live together in Cosey’s mansion. Then Junior enters the picture. She is hired by Heed to serve as Heed’s assistant. The story then begins to unfold both backwards and forwards as Ms. Morrison begins to weave her spell. We discover the history of Bill Cosey and the women in his life as well as the continuing events in the seaside town.
I got so much out of this novel but not a lot that I can actually coherently explain or verbalize.
Like every other novel that Ms. Morrison has written, this one left me feeling upbeat and positive while still tasting the bitter and the sad. I don’t really have much else to say at this point other than this book really got me thinking about a lot of issues and that it renewed my undying love for Ms. Morrison.
Here’s a quote I stole from oprah.com. It’s by Ms. Morrison about love.
"The idea of a wanton woman is something I have inserted into almost all of my books," Ms. Morrison said. "An outlaw figure who is disallowed in the community because of her imagination or activity or status—that kind of anarchic figure has always fascinated me. And the benefits they bring with them, in spite of the fact that they are either dismissed or upbraided—something about their presence is constructive in the long run. Sula, for instance, was someone the other characters missed terribly when she was gone, even though she was the pariah. In Love, Junior is a poor, rootless, free-floating young woman—a survivor, a manipulator, a hungry person—but she does create a space where people can come with their better selves."
She said she was alarmed when she realized the title of this book might be Love, but the fact of her alarm was so interesting to her, it kept her from dismissing the idea. "It is easily the most empty cliché, the most useless word, and at the same time the most powerful human emotion—because hatred is involved in it, too. I thought if I removed the word from nearly every other place in the manuscript, it could become an earned word. If I could give the word, in my very modest way, its girth and its meaning and its terrible price and its clarity at the moment when that is all there is time for, then the title does work for me."
And this is a quote from the book.
“I’ve come to believe every family has a Dark and needs one. All over the world, traitors help progress. It’s like being exposed to tuberculosis. After it fills the cemetery, it strengthens whoever survices; helps them know the difference between a strong mind and a healthy one; between the righteous and the right- which is,after all, progress. The problem for those left alive is what to do about revenge- how to escape the sweetness of its rot.” (139)
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