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Toni Morrison Explained: A Reader's Road Map to the Novels

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toni morrison explained at last--in plain language!, April 19, 2002
Reviewer: A reader from Little Falls, NY USA
It's wonderful to read analyses of Morrison's extremely complicated novels written by a real person, in real language that isn't phony, confusing, or pretentious. Ron David writes as a real person would talk, something that I found extremely enjoyable (although I can see where some would find it annoying). I love that, while he praises Morrison as the finest author of our time, he is not afraid to point out and openly criticize much of her writing, particularly THE BLUEST EYE. I thoroughly enjoyed what he had to say about JAZZ; if anything, he makes you feel better about not understanding all of her writings. David's admittance that he doesn't understand what the hell JAZZ was all about is enough to make us all feel better about not understanding it, either. His style is wonderfully intimate, friendly, and easily readable. This book is highly recommended to anyone who has struggled with Morrison. It also made me feel proud to discover that many readers are never even able to finish her books--and I've read four.

Explained is as Explained does, August 1, 2000
Reviewer: Ed Santa Vicca from Phoenix, AZ United States
Even if you have never read any of Toni Morrison's work, reading this commentary and explication is such an enjoyable experience, you might put aside that other book that you haven't yet finished. David has a technique and style of drawing you into his unique approach to literary criticism--which this is not--and to chatty and healthy conversation about what Toni Morrison did or did not do, and what her books really mean. Eye-opening and quite entertaining, this work will likely be consulted by many a student in many a literature course, and by many a fan of Morrison. It just might open the door to a whole new school of interpretation!

  Well Thought and Explained . ., February 5, 2001
Reviewer: Maurice Williams from Chicago, IL USA
This is definitely my recommendation for a "one-stop" analysis of Morrison's fiction. I do not agree with all of David's opinions - we all have them. However, like an archeologist excavating a buried treasure, he meticulously unravels the meaning behind the language, the naming of the characters, the technique behind the delivery. He further demonstrates how Morrison makes use of biblical doctrine, musical structure and myth in her work. The analysis of Paradise is by far the most intelligent, well-written critique I've read to date. Toni Morrison Explained provides a range of possible interpretations for the reader to ponder and ultimately integrate with our own experience of the Nobel novelist writings. Kudos to David for doing the work required to experience Morrison's fiction on a whole 'nother level.  

(If you'd like to check out Toni Morrison Explained on Amazon just click...)

PARADISE

Random House's first printing of my book made the book's signature chapter, on Morrison's novel Paradise, incomprehensible.  Among other things, they put eight critical sidebars several pages before the text they referred to.  I bitched; they fixed it.  For those of you who bought the first version of the book -- and for anyone who would like to make sense of Morrison's misunderstood masterpiece -- I will soon set up a link between this page and Chapter 13, my book's explanation of Paradise, Toni Morrison's utterly brilliant and truly funny last novel...the way it should be. 

Random House took so long to publish the book that we decided to change the Author's Intro.  The original Author's Intro, printed below, does a pretty good job of expressing the incredible excitement I felt. 

Author's Intro

It seems impossible.  It couldn’t have happened.   But it did...

          Toni Morrison is the most highly regarded author in America.  She has won both the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes.  She is the most in-demand, most quoted, interviewed, and adored writer of our time.  Paradise,  Morrison’s first novel  since winning the Nobel Prize in 1993, may have been the most eagerly awaited and enthusiastically hyped novel of all time: THREE reviews in the New York Times; the COVER of  (and a seven-page review and cover story in) Time magazine;  a five page review in the New Yorker—I’m sure you get the picture.  Within two weeks of its publication, Paradise was given queen-sized reviews in virtually every newspaper and weekly magazine in the country.

          The only trouble is, the reviews were wrong.  

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If you find that hard to believe, I don’t blame you.  I did too.  But as you will see, I have proven it.  Why am I writing this note?  To emphasize the point that the chapter on Paradise is the heart of this book (it’s nearly twice as long as any other chapter). Instead of making you wait until the last chapter to see what the book is about, I wanted to give you a taste of the things critics overlooked; how important those things are; and how I went about proving them wrong.  I wrote a letter to a friend to explain the same things.  This letter also communicates the way I felt a few minutes after I had finished the chapter on Paradise.  The date was March 22, 1998.  It was around five in the morning, I was ecstatic, proud, out of my mind with joy, spirituality, cheap thrills and far too excited to sleep.  So I wrote a letter—

Dear Glenn—

          I’ve made some discoveries about Toni Morrison’s new novel PARADISE that are so exciting I’m bouncing off the walls.  PARADISE is a drastically different book than any of the critics say it is.  I have over 20 reviews, including NY TIMES, NEW YORKER, TIME and other big dudes.  I can show them to you right here and now, and prove to you in a few minutes (even if you haven’t read the novel) that they have ALL misread and misunderstood Toni Morrison’s novel as thoroughly as if they’d reviewed a new movie of OTHELLO without noticing that it was by the Three Stooges—and that by missing the humor and irony, they have taken the book to mean almost the exact opposite of what it really does mean.  The critics had read Toni Morrison’s reputation instead of her words because Morrison had used her Serious-as-a-Car-Wreck reputation to make us go hmm, I thought it was “walking pneumonia,” but if Toni says it’s “locking pneumonia,” then it must be “locking pneumonia”; hmm, I thought that 158 freedmen went into Oklahoma, but if Toni says right here that “all seventy-nine of them” left, I must have been mistaken; hmm, if Toni says on the first page of the book that you need a palm leaf cross and sunglasses to kill women, then you must need a palm leaf cross and sunglasses to kill women?  hmmm, I was certain that there were five women in the convent, but if Toni says on the first page of the book, that there were “nine [men], “over twice the number of women”—nine is not “over twice” five—I must have missed something, maybe one of the ladies escaped or the men spared one of them or the best editors in the world made a mistake on the first page of the most eagerly anticipated novel of the decade!!...because the one thing that could NOT have happened is that Toni Morrison could have turned into a Trickster Goddess who was playing with us, jerking us around, planting “facts” that contradicted each other, givings us twins with photographic memories who said “locking pneumonia” and had 158 founders one day and  79 the next...and so on.   I realize that sounds impossible, but I repeat: I can prove it to anyone within fifteen minutes even if they haven’t read the book. I’d love to get the chapter on PARADISE published to get credit for this.  If you ask me, it’s a lot more important than those shitty little skulls Louis Leaky found after digging up half of Africa...  

l

It is now a year later.  My book is at Random House, due to be out in the Fall 1999.  Thrilled as I am, I can’t help imagining how it would have felt to be the person who had shown bookpeople that Toni Morrison’s new novel—which had been given a lukewarm, almost frightened, reception—was actually one of the finest, most original, most life-affirming novels written by anyone, ever?  It’s too late to be first so I guess I’ll have to settle for trying to write the best book about Paradise.

l

Author’s Tip #1:  Feel free to skip the bio.  This book doesn’t really fly until it gets to Toni Morrison’s novels. 

Author’s Tip #2:  Writing a book and having it published is a lot like having the greatest sex of your life and having to wait a year for the orgasm.  

(PS: Make that two years.)

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