Toni Morrison Interviewed

 Toni Morrison has and will appear often in these posts. I find her that important of a writer. Specific posts dealing with Ms Morrison are Writer: Toni Morrison and Toni Morrison's Nobel Lecture.

My excerpts from Toni Morrison, The Art of Fiction No. 134 follow:

INTERVIEWER

Did you know as a child you wanted to be a writer?

MORRISON

No. I wanted to be a reader. I thought everything that needed to be written had already been written or would be. I only wrote the first book because I thought it wasn’t there, and I wanted to read it when I got through. I am a pretty good reader. I love it. It is what I do, really. So, if I can read it, that is the highest compliment I can think of. People say, I write for myself, and it sounds so awful and so narcissistic, but in a sense if you know how to read your own work— that is, with the necessary critical distance—it makes you a better writer and editor. When I teach creative writing, I always speak about how you have to learn how to read your work; I don’t mean enjoy it because you wrote it. I mean, go away from it, and read it as though it is the first time you’ve ever seen it. Critique it that way. Don’t get all involved in your thrilling sentences and all that . . .

***

 INTERVIEWER

One way to achieve this structurally is to have several voices speaking throughout each book. Why do you do this?

MORRISON

It’s important not to have a totalizing view. In American literature we have been so totalized—as though there is only one version. We are not one indistinguishable block of people who always behave the same way.

***

INTERVIEWER

Is that what you mean by totalized?

MORRISON

 Yes. A definitive or an authoritarian view from somebody else or someone speaking for us. No singularity and no diversity. I try to give some credibility to all sorts of voices, each of which is profoundly different. Because what strikes me about African American culture is its variety. In so much of contemporary music everybody sounds alike. But when you think about black music, you think about the difference between Duke Ellington and Sidney Bechet or Satchmo or Miles Davis.

Beautiful writer. I think she had to have been a beautiful person. I pay attention to what she has to say. I think you should do so.

sch 5/28/22