Toni Morrison 2: Song of Solomon
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What is the significance of Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon?
we're all listening to this podcast because, well, we love classic books. It's hugely exciting to be giving a big plug to our podcasting friends, the team from Book Riot, who are making the Fantastic Books podcast zero to well-read. I listen to it all the time and I learn from it constantly. The team is Jeff O'Neill and Rebecca Shinsky from Book Riot, and they've been talking about books on the internet together for almost 15 years. They've heard from a lot of people who feel like they missed the window to read the so-called important books. So they created Zero to Well Read. It's a podcast that tells you everything you need to know about the books you wish you'd read. From classics to contemporary hits and social media sensations, you hear from Jeff and Rebecca why they're so great, what you should know about them, what makes them weird and fun and strange and why they matter.
These guys are willing to go in and get their hands dirty talking about all sorts of books from the... unquestionable classics to what we might call emerging classics or contemporary classics have a listen can't recommend them highly enough Sophie we got a bit derailed and distracted by the Hollywood publicity machine coming to town didn't we Yeah, we did. We couldn't help ourselves, Jonty. I like to think that we were not merely derailed by the shiny vinyl red dress that Margot Robbie was wearing in Wuthering Heights, nor by her sensual licking of the rocks of the North Yorkshire Moors. I like to think that... We were seduced on higher grounds. We were seduced because a great, great work of classic literature suddenly found itself thrust onto the mainstream popular media stage, didn't it?
And we needed to weigh in as cultural commentators. We did. But now we're back in the series we were doing. This is The Secret Life of Books. I am Jonty Claypole, rather fatigued by Jacob Elordi and looking forward to getting back into Toni Morrison. And I'm Sophie Gee, a professor of literature and frankly, unbelievably relieved to be back doing what I flatter myself I do best, which is reading great works of literature. So this week, The Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. Song of Solomon was Toni Morrison's third novel after her debut, The Bluest Eye, in 1970, or debut, as you would say, Sophie, and her second novel, Sula, in 1973. Song of Solomon was published in 1977, and it was the novel that pushed Morrison into mainstream recognition as a major American writer, not just of her own generation, but of all generations past, present, and to come.
This is partly because Song of Solomon, even more explicitly than The Bluest Eye had done or the more famous Beloved would do, takes on something like the whole of African-American history, from Africa itself to the southern landscapes of plantation slavery and the Civil War to the post-abolition North. It's a family chronicle focusing on the life story of the well-to-do Macon Dead III, aka Milkman, as he grows from boy to man in 1930s and 40s Michigan, surrounded by several generations of his family, part of the post-abolition Great Migration from South to North. The book quickly became the toast of the town, a call to awareness for American readers of the late 1970s, as it became even more apparent that the black civil rights movement of the past three decades was at best a partial success.
Not one, but two white reviewers in the New York Times would praise Song of Solomon as a masterpiece, praising it for its magisterial sweep of American history and breaking with the rules of domestic realism. Not that there's anything wrong with being a white writer praising Toni Morrison. Guilty as charged, Sophie. The reason we bring it up is that one of Morrison's signature qualities as a writer was to focus on writing about black characters for black readers in ways that moved beyond the range of tropes, devices and storylines that white readers could understand and that previous generations of black writers had been able to immerse themselves in. And we're going to talk about why that's the case, because it's really quite fascinating to think about why Morrison was suddenly able to shift gears so radically and just introduce this, what appeared to be a completely new idiom of writing about black experience.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the significance of Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon?
0:00–14:23
2
How does Song of Solomon address African American history?
14:23–29:08
3
Why did Toni Morrison choose a male protagonist for this novel?
29:08–31:59
4
How does Toni Morrison use magic realism in her writing?
31:59–43:35
5
What role does flight play in the narrative of Song of Solomon?
43:35–1:04:10