I wrote this review in March of 2019, about six months before Toni Morrison's death. It would be the first of two books I would read before their author's death. This books importance to me has only grown since I first read it (as a library book, no less). I hope to own it one day, but I do at least have access to the two essays that have affected the way I think of fiction the most-deeply.
The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations by Toni Morrison
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
One thing that can be said about Toni Morrison is that she has no time for modesty and all the time for hubris. She's the athlete that trash-talks, but can back it up with skill: a literary Muhammad Ali (whose autobiography The Greatest: My Own Story she edited). As interesting as it was to read her views on literature and her literary criticism, I was fascinated at how she configured her own personae. That added a very unusual dynamic to this book since most of this book was transcripts of speeches rather than actual essays.
Some of these selections were amazing. I was intrigued by her thoughts on the so-called "canon wars" of the late 1980s-early 1990s, because she (or rather her work) was one of the big topics of it. One quote by her that caught my attention was "Canon building is empire building, canon defense is national defense." Lines and passages like that gave me food for thought, especially given how out-dated that controversy is now. That same section had a very powerful examination of Moby-Dick, or, the Whale, which has prepared me even more to read it.
Her use of the Cinderella fable, Sula, and Beowulf to explain her own theory of feminism was very well-done. I know that Morrison does not identify as a card-carrying feminist (or at least she has said in interviews that she has problems with the term as we know it), but she seems to outline ideas and a philosophy that can easily be called feminism. For her, showing the importance how women relate to each other is very important. At the very least, it would be interesting to compare her ideas with that of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie--another Black woman novelist who very much identifies as a feminist (though not a womanist).
In another passage Morrison says, "When I hear someone say, 'Truth is stranger than fiction,' I think that old chestnut is truer than we know, because it doesn't say that truth is truer than fiction; just that it's stranger, meaning that it's odd. It may be excessive, it may be more interesting, but the important thing is that it's random--and fiction is not random." (-- Both bold texts are mine.) This was like the key piece of thought that I'd been looking for for awhile now. This is something so profound, but not appreciated enough by writers or readers now-a-days. This fact is what separates myth from history. The site of memory in this book is something you really appreciate as you go deeper into your self as a reader. Lines like this quotation are found throughout the book.
The only parts of this book I skipped over are the parts that reference books by her that I have not read yet. Morrison is her biggest fan so her primary reference for her literary criticism is her own work. This obvious means we get expert commentary by the author, but we also get spoiled or a very "guided" interpretation of the work. I wanted more examinations of her own contemporaries or works she liked (or hated), but one has to settle. I was fascinated by her ideas on writing, even though I don't think I agreed with half of it. It is always interesting to see the psyche of a particular writer, especially one who is this knowledgeable and...we'll say confident. Some of these speeches I'd already heard like her Nobel Lecture and eulogy of James Baldwin, but most of these were definitely "archive/lost tapes" material.
I wish I could go in further, but I will have to reread the book with more time (and after reading more novels by Toni Morrison).
View all my reviews
Search This Blog
Stuff I'm Currently Reading
About Me
- B. P. Rinehart
- So far, I write about what ever holds my attention the most stubbornly. Until the sidebar works regularly for me, The display is going to have the sidebar stuff here, then the main blog.
My Labratories At The Moment
Blog Archive
-
▼
2020
(77)
-
▼
July
(24)
- Some Thoughts on Those in the Out-Club
- My Review of Dragon Inn '龍門客棧' (1967) directed by ...
- My Review of Come Drink With Me 大醉俠 (1966) directe...
- Appreciation for Charles Burnett
- On Iranian New Wave Cinema
- My Review of Touki Bouki directed by Djibril Diop ...
- My Goodreads Review of Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
- My Goodreads Review of The Iliad by Homer
- Shakespeare and Me
- My Goodreads Review of Hamlet by William Shakespeare
- My Review of Brae New World by Aldous Huxley
- Brave New Crappy World
- Some thoughts on Maya Angelou & poetry
- My Review of And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
- My Review of The Source of Self-Regard by Toni Mor...
- Some Thoughts After My First Quarter of Moby Dick
- A Short-Meditation on Two Characters
- My Review of Sula by Toni Morrison
- My Review of Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- My Top 5 Movies
- Part 2 of My "Biblio-Memior" from Goodreads
- Part 1 of My Goodreads "Biblio-Memior"
- Black Reconstruction by W. E. B. Du Bois
- Introduction
-
▼
July
(24)
Featured Post
Black Reconstruction by W. E. B. Du Bois
My first post here is of course a Goodreads review, but one of my favorite and the only one that won't show-up on the book's entry p...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
-
View this post on Instagram These are my top 5 favorite films. These films represent in different ways my ideas or have ...
-
My first post here is of course a Goodreads review, but one of my favorite and the only one that won't show-up on the book's entry p...
-
This is another one of thoughs books that sticks with you long after reading it, specifically the last page. Like the ending of One Day I Wi...
No comments:
Post a Comment