Sophie Gee

That's such a good answer.

I defy the listeners not to be into archives after hearing that.

Could you think of an example, Autumn, either for yourself or for your students, where some really exciting question has come up that couldn't have come up without being immersed in the archive?

Part of what I really like about the way you explained that, you must have been really psyched when you found that, is that sort of superficially, it seems like Toni Morrison just changed her mind, you know?

So it seems like a reversal, but

But actually what you're saying, and I am completely persuaded by it, is that it's not a change of heart.

It's a change of sort of emphasis or way of making the same point.

Yes.

And it really sheds a lot of light both on joy and on violence and hate across the whole world, even though it's just one moment in an abandoned draft.

So Autumn, that actually is a beautiful segue to the last thing I'd love to ask you about, which is what you are doing in writing what I've been describing to people possibly inaccurately as a biography of the novel.

It sounds extremely ambitious.

The hardest thing I've ever done.

It's very hard.

It sounds hard.

I am totally certain you'll do a brilliant job, but it sounds really enormous.

And how do you think that you're Morrison from being a scholar?

actually from having your scholarly background in the 19th century, how do you think that you're going to be giving us a slightly different Morrison?

It sounds absolutely fantastic.

So who were her interlocutors historically?

and companions on a craft level that must have changed across her writing life.