Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison.
Photograph © Caroll Taveras for The Guardian.

There is an interview with novelist Toni Morrison at The Guardian today. In part the interview is about her writing and her new novel. In part too she talks about politics. And I appreciate her views very much. But this week, especially, am struck by her closing comments about her son who recently died and her response to people offering condolences following his death. Here is what she says and, I will add, I could hardly agree more:

"What do you say? There really are no words for that. There really aren't. Somebody tries to say, 'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.' People say that to me. There's no language for it. Sorry doesn't do it. I think you should just hug people and mop their floor or something."

And then her assessment of books and other writings about grief, about which, I have been almost uniformly uncomplimentary here in the past too. She dismisses:

"Books that have been written about the death of a child, but are all about the author. And people who were trying to soothe me, were trying to soothe me. I never heard anything about him. They say it's about the living, it's not, it's about the dead."

Too many people, spend too much energy making someone else's death about themselves. I've seen that happen close up and it is not pretty. Is it so hard, after all, to make death about the dead? Not really. This past week, for instance, many of Jeff's friends and classmates wrote wonderful, touching things about him on his FB page. For that I am grateful.

Back Talk: Toni Morrison

You've talked about how official languages can stifle identity. Do you have any thoughts about the ways that technologies like e-mail and texting are changing how people speak and write?

Language changes--and should--because it is as alive as its speakers and writers. It is stifling or bad only when unclear, mediocre, false or wholly devoid of creative imagination. That may apply to some texting and e-mail, but not all.

And you can find the rest of the interview here.

Not Speaking of Torture ~ A Warning from Toni Morrison on the Importance of "Unmolested Language"

Portrait of Toni Morrison © Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek - it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language - all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.

I have taken this passage from "The Bird is in Your Hands," the parable Toni Morrison offered when she received the Nobel Prize for Literature a decade and a half ago. This passage , indeed her lecture as a whole, come to mind whenever I encounter on npr, or in The New York Times or The Guardian, or in even less reliable outlets, euphemisms such as "enhanced interrogation techniques" or "harsh interrogation." The proper phrase, the truthful one, the one that accurately conveys what purveyors of euphemisms work so diligently to keep obscure - thereby abetting the outrageous criminal policies of our government - is torture.

If ever you wonder about the value of writers and artists, imagine the consequences of not having them around. Imagine where we might be without those who, like Morrison, warn us of the dangers of allowing our language to drink blood. Toni Morrison was born this day in 1931. That makes her 77 years old. Happy Birthday! And thanks for the warning.