The cover story in the November-December issue of
Poets & Writers is about Toni Morrison, whose upcoming novel
A Mercy I'm eagerly awaiting. The piece, by Kevin Nance, is mostly based on an interview with the author but also includes some criticisms of her by other writers and critics. The core of the critique is that her writing is too political and, astonishingly, that somehow this country's history of chattel slavery is no longer relevant for contemporary fiction. Ms. Morrison demolishes both points:
Responding to the "political" rap, her gaze sharpens. "All of that art-for-art's-sake stuff is BS," she declares. "What are these people talking about? Are you really telling me that Shakespeare and Aeschylus weren't writing about kings? All good art is political! There is none that isn't!"
And "she says in a steely voice":
Slavery can never be exhausted as a narrative. Nor can the Holocaust; nor can the potato famine; nor can war. To say slavery is over is to be ridiculous. There is nothing in those catastrophic events of human life that is exhaustible at all.
Amen.
