Namwali Serpell

It's wonderful to be here with you.

Thank you so much.

That's the highest compliment I could receive.

And it's precisely the goal of the book, which, of course, I derived from Morrison herself, who said that she wanted to be as sophisticated as she wanted to be and also as pleasurable.

The highest aspiration for her, of course, was jazz, jazz music being incredibly complex, but also really fun to listen to.

I think you got there.

A classic musical form, and of course the classics in jazz are called the standards.

Something that I really like about this version of the question is that it uses a word that, these are the words that we use now, but classic holds in it, in its origin, right, the notion of classes, right?

This isn't just about social class.

It's also about classes in a hierarchy, artistic excellence or accomplishment.

And I have a perpetual, ongoing argument.

with my husband, who is also a writer and a professor, about whether aesthetic value is objective or subjective.

And I believe it is subjective.

He believes it's absolutely objective.

And he often catches me when I say something is the best or a great work of art or an incredible work of art.

And he says, well, is that an objective statement or a subjective?

No, it's subjective.

Of course, it's what I believe.

But then...

What you find is when many people believe that about something, you start to wonder, well, maybe it is objectively a classic.