Namwali Serpell

I call it, in fact, her masterpiece or her masterwork.

And part of it is because it is the work around which you can almost revolve all the others.

It's like the sun at the center of everything.

Forest and solar system.

But when it comes to the books that she loved, that she had a special affection for Tar Baby, which is her surrealist classic.

She had a love for jazz.

She said that jazz was her favorite of the novels that she'd written.

Which is a very experimental novel.

And so in terms of what were her standards or what were her classics when she's thinking about her, she didn't actually say Beloved.

Beloved, I think, also did come to dominate the way that people talked to her and interviewed her and spoke to her.

And nor would I think she say that she was using it as mere influence either.

Influence is a very tricky thing for Morrison.

And so it's not like she's writing back to Nabokov or trying to correct.

But as you say, nor is she trying to cancel.

What I thought was really interesting was just that they both –

have an underappreciated focus on the child and the complication of love.

that a young girl will feel when she's been abused by a father figure.

And this is something that I think often gets lost.

Lolita herself gets lost in the conversation about that novel.

And that's precisely the part of the moral point of that book.