Rating: 
Summary: Very Enlightening
Review: Toni Morrison is one of my favorite authors; her blend of style, fierce intelligence, ambition, daring, and tenderness is rare to find in American authors today. More than anything, Morrison wants to write books that /matter/, that challenge our preconceptions and prejudices and force us to acknowledge our complicity in social problems. /Playing in the Dark/ is a book that matters. In it, Morrison engages in a fascinating critical project: to trace an "Africanist" presence through American literature and see how people of African descent have been used in literature as ways to talk about freedom, bondage, passion, discipline, class, sex, power... (By "Africanist," Morrison is referring to the "denotative and connotative blackness that African peoples have come to signify, as well as the entire range of views, assumptions, readings, and misreadings that accompany Eurocentric learning about these people." (p.6-7) ) It's an intriguing, important idea, and one well worth looking into. Morrison offers some generalized thoughts about the matter and also talks about looking at how the Africanist presence in American literature can be seen as a way to, by contrast, construct a portrait of what "whiteness" is supposed to be. She then moves on to some inspired readings of Cather's /Sapphira and the Slave Girl/, Poe's /The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym/, Twain's /Huckleberry Finn/ (perhaps the best of the intrepretations offered), and Hemingway's /To Have and Have Not/ and /The Garden of Eden/. Unfortunately, this book is simply too short - it's a scant ninety pages. Morrison's ideas entice and seduce us, but it is over all too soon. More case studies ranging over a wider time period in American literature would be helpful. Too, Morrison makes claims that need to be corroborated but aren't in the book. For example, she makes the claim that images of whiteness and paleness usually appear to close a narrative in which there is a strong Africanist presence, saying "They {the images} appear so often and in such particular circumstance that they give pause." (p.33)" All well and good, but she gives us no more than the solitary example of /The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym./ This book is still definitely worth looking into for anyone interested in race and American fiction. It's just too bad that Morrison could not have delineated her ideas more fully.
Rating: 
Summary: A Fascinating Book That Needs to Follow Through
Review: Toni Morrison is one of my favorite authors; her blend of style, fierce intelligence, ambition, daring, and tenderness is rare to find in American authors today. More than anything, Morrison wants to write books that /matter/, that challenge our preconceptions and prejudices and force us to acknowledge our complicity in social problems. /Playing in the Dark/ is a book that matters. In it, Morrison engages in a fascinating critical project: to trace an "Africanist" presence through American literature and see how people of African descent have been used in literature as ways to talk about freedom, bondage, passion, discipline, class, sex, power... (By "Africanist," Morrison is referring to the "denotative and connotative blackness that African peoples have come to signify, as well as the entire range of views, assumptions, readings, and misreadings that accompany Eurocentric learning about these people." (p.6-7) ) It's an intriguing, important idea, and one well worth looking into. Morrison offers some generalized thoughts about the matter and also talks about looking at how the Africanist presence in American literature can be seen as a way to, by contrast, construct a portrait of what "whiteness" is supposed to be. She then moves on to some inspired readings of Cather's /Sapphira and the Slave Girl/, Poe's /The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym/, Twain's /Huckleberry Finn/ (perhaps the best of the intrepretations offered), and Hemingway's /To Have and Have Not/ and /The Garden of Eden/. Unfortunately, this book is simply too short - it's a scant ninety pages. Morrison's ideas entice and seduce us, but it is over all too soon. More case studies ranging over a wider time period in American literature would be helpful. Too, Morrison makes claims that need to be corroborated but aren't in the book. For example, she makes the claim that images of whiteness and paleness usually appear to close a narrative in which there is a strong Africanist presence, saying "They {the images} appear so often and in such particular circumstance that they give pause." (p.33)" All well and good, but she gives us no more than the solitary example of /The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym./ This book is still definitely worth looking into for anyone interested in race and American fiction. It's just too bad that Morrison could not have delineated her ideas more fully.
Rating:
Summary: The Importance of Seeing in the Dark
Review: When I first read this amazing criticism on American literary history, I finally got it. A huge cloud of misunderstanding and empty justifications lifted from above my head, and I, for the first time, learned how to critically analyze a text. Much more, I learned how to engage with a history of texts. Playing in the Dark effectively chronicles the absence or misconstruction of African-Americans in the fiction of Poe, Melville, Cather, and Hemmingway. Morrison's illuminations on how the presence of black is often conflated with evil and lurking metaphores, while white is typically reduced to all that is pure is truly brought to life through the literary examples she utilizes. Further, her argument concerning how Africanism was/is used as a distancing mechanism to ensure hegemony retains its power is most likely the most well developed argument of its kind. All of Morrison's thoughts are hopefully (and I stress hopefully with utopian blinders on) already flying through the psyches of Americans, but Playing in the Dark gives concrete words to abstract thoughts. This book is an absolute must read for anyone who plans to critically engage in literature.
Rating:
Summary: The Importance of Seeing in the Dark
Review: When I first read this amazing criticism on American literary history, I finally got it. A huge cloud of misunderstanding and empty justifications lifted from above my head, and I, for the first time, learned how to critically analyze a text. Much more, I learned how to engage with a history of texts. Playing in the Dark effectively chronicles the absence or misconstruction of African-Americans in the fiction of Poe, Melville, Cather, and Hemmingway. Morrison's illuminations on how the presence of black is often conflated with evil and lurking metaphores, while white is typically reduced to all that is pure is truly brought to life through the literary examples she utilizes. Further, her argument concerning how Africanism was/is used as a distancing mechanism to ensure hegemony retains its power is most likely the most well developed argument of its kind. All of Morrison's thoughts are hopefully (and I stress hopefully with utopian blinders on) already flying through the psyches of Americans, but Playing in the Dark gives concrete words to abstract thoughts. This book is an absolute must read for anyone who plans to critically engage in literature.
|
