Oh sparknotes...
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But you must know that I grew up on books if you are ever to understand me, me as a person and me as a reader. Do you know what it is like for me to start a good book? To hold an unread book in my hands, to feel the possibilities blooming just under the surface, to run my hands gently along its spine and just KNOW that something wonderful is waiting inside, something life-altering and strong and... and true.
I think that, on some level, everyone is always looking for truth. Some people travel the world trying to find it, others search for it cautiously in their backyards. We look for it through relationships, through education, through religion. And I, because I grew up reading, look for the truth in fiction.
I think it is because I grew up on books that I am such a harsh, and often-times eccentric, critic of them. I don't look for the same things in books that other people do. For example, a lot of times people think that a simile is beautiful because of the words used, or the picture painted. For me, a simile must first be irrevocably accurate and build its beauty from there. Yes, the beauty is in the picture painted. But it starts with a sketch. One of the best similes I've ever read I discovered just last week, in a book called Little Bee by Chris Cleave. A Nigerian refugee compares learning to speak British English to taking off toenail polish, saying that "Learning the Queen's English is like scrubbing off the bright red varnish from your toenails, the morning after a dance. It takes a long time and there is always a little bit left at the end, a stain of red along the growing edges to remind you of the good time you had" (Cleave, 3). I seriously had a little spasm of delight after reading that. Haven't we all experienced this in our required language classes? The hours of practice to learn the words, and then that undeniable, unpreventable itch of accent that creeps up on us, or that natural instinct when someone says hello to us, in whatever language they use, to respond with the language we are most comfortable with?
This books is heartbreaking but beautiful. If you're looking for a good read, I read this in one sitting :)
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And I won't lie: If I ever, while reading a book, while emersing myselves in those characters, have to think of the author and what they were trying to accomplish, I feel that the author has failed. I should never see this book as something untrue, as something fictional, as a figment of someone's imagination or creativity or political agenda. Characters are born, not created. Fictional worlds are discovered, not imagined. And these elements of a story should mesh, should function together, should EXIST.
I'm not saying that authors shouldn't or can't have characters think or do certain things to make a point. Just the opposite. I love when a characters action makes me reevaluate things, or alerts me to the irony and dry, dark humor of the world. And I'm not saying that I don't want to analyze how an author's choices in their writing effect me as a reader or the message a book is sending. In fact, I feel that analyzing an authors literary techniques is an essential part of appreciating what you read, as well as an effective way of making sure that you as a reader are not blinded by the literary techniques an author employs to get their message across. It's like when they have clothing ads, and all of the people wearing the garments look ridiculously attractive. Nowadays, most people are aware that they will not magically transform into models if they buy from Express. They look at an advertisement and often remark on the fact that certain articles of clothing would not look good on anyone except for those individuals pictures in the advertisements. Analyzing literature is a way of monitoring your emotional responses to what you read, as well as a tool for appreciating how an author is able to elicit these responses from you.
An Express ad...
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I like to think that authors care what I think about their books, that they worry about how their novels have affected be, changed my life, etc. Especially after reading Toni Morrison's afterward, I hope that she, personally, wanted me to be touched by her writing. She says so explicitly, at some points, how she deliberately "protected [the reader] from a confrontation too soon with the painful details" (Morrison, 213) of Pecola's rape through her ingenious first two sentences, framed by the "suggestion of illicit gossip" (Morrison, 212) of Morrison's opening sentence and "'trivial' information" such as "marigolds [that] did not grow" (Morrison, 213).
If you were wondering what marigolds look like... here they are!
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And I was. Touched, that is, by The Bluest Eye. I saw truth in everything: in Pecola's desire for beauty, in the towns reaction to her rape, in the frail backstory of how this tragic event came to be, in the family dynamics of both the Breedlove's and Claudia's household. But there was something I didn't see: I never thought to myself that dreaded phrase, that hated snippet of sentence that reads "what was the author trying to say when she...". I don't think I've ever read a book that had this much truth and was also so carefully contrived by the author. If I read it again, I think I might see it more, these deliberate ways that Morrison plays with language. But maybe not...
One of my favorite books of all time is called A Heart Divided by Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfield. It centers around a 17 year old aspiring playwright who moves from New York City to Redwood, Tennessee with her family. She basically arrives in the middle a huge controversy with the schools symbol, a confederate flag, and decides to write a play about it to prove to her theatre teacher back home that she can write more then light comedy. His advice to her, before she leaves, or rather is warning for her, is that "You can't write what you don't know" (Bennett and Gottesfield, 20). Once she finishes her play, after a year in Redwood, she admits that she's not sure she can claim ownership to it, that it may in fact belong to the townspeople who inspired it. I think that with The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison was decidedly writin something that she did know, very well. But I also think that she, like the fictional playwright in A Heart Divided, feels somewhat that she can't claim ownership of the story. Should it belong to her blue-eye desiring friend? Or perhaps to the era in which it was written, that "political writing in which the writing took place... a time of great social upheaval in the lives of black people (Morrison, 212). Or maybe, more then to anyone else, this story that Morrison wrote belongs to "the most delicate member of society: a child," within whom "the demonization of an entire race" (Morrison, 210) has taken root.
I don't know if Morrison feels this way, really. But I think that if ever I succeeded in writing something as true and poignant as The Bluest Eye, something that was going to alter lives and change minds and touch hearts, I wouldn't feel comfortable calling it mine. I'd probably say, instead, that it belonged to the readers, who took the truth I wrote and made it their own.
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