The Washington Post - 19.08.2019

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MONDAY, AUGUST 19 , 2019. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/STYLE EZ RE C

BY TRAVIS DESHONG

“T

eaching is the second

best thing to writing for

me,” Toni Morrison told

a large audience in 2012.

She’d been lecturing at univer-

sities for more than 50 years

when she uttered those words. As

the acclaimed literary figure’s

work is being celebrated in the

weeks since her death at 88, her

former students are reflecting on

her influence as a teacher who

commanded her classrooms with

a spellbinding blend of wit, sensi-

bility and grace.

David Hancock Turner — who

in 2002 took a Morrison course at

Princeton University, where she

taught in the university’s creative

writing program and in African

American studies from 1989 un-

til she transferred to emeritus

status in 2006 — recalled a

speech she gave that laid out her

academic philosophy.

“Universities play a powerful

mnemonic role,” Morrison said

in a keynote address as the

university celebrated its 250th

anniversary. “Their fields, their

campuses, are dotted with fig-

ures and plaques of bronze,

stone, and marble — with botani-

cal life to keep memory alive. But

universities are not memorabil-

ia; they’re not mausoleums.”

In Morrison’s view, elite insti-

tutions weren’t tombs to pre-

serve old educational traditions.

SEE MORRISON ON C3

BY RICHARD LIPEZ

There’s never a dull moment in
Georgia with Karin Slaughter on
the literary rampage. In her new-
est book, “The Last Widow,” the
popular thriller writer lays out her
customary spread of clinically ob-
served, bloody mayhem. I lost
count of the dead and dying after
the first bomb went off at Emory
University on Page 22. With real-
life mass murder an American fix-
ture now, this book’s gore makes it
something of a surreal beach read.
Thankfully, as usual, Slaughter
also gives us characters who are
easy to care about: Sara Linton, a
pediatrician and part-time coro-
ner, and state investigator Will
Trent. The two are together for the
ninth time — along with
believable baddies you can’t wait
to see drawn and quartered, and
not necessarily metaphorically,
either.
This time it’s an all-too-timely
far-right white supremacist mili-
tia destined for comeuppance. It

takes quite a while for this reckon-

ing to eventuate, however, and

448 pages of blood and guts are

more than some readers may need

— or want. Luckily, interspersed

among the carnage are some nice

scenes with Linton and Trent, who

are on the verge of moving in

together despite his inability to

communicate and her intimidat-

ing stock portfolio.

Slaughter is wonderfully adept

at showing decent people strug-

gling in their relationships. Will,

she writes, “was trying to be more

open with Sara about what he was

feeling,” so “he just made a note on

his calendar every Monday to tell

her something that was bothering

him.” Later, he will have to survive

not only domestic terrorists but

also Linton’s mother, Cathy, who

was “like a skunk who could not

stop spraying in Will’s direction.”

The novel’s bang-up opening

scene has a clever twist on a cur-

rent trend in pop fiction. A mother

and her 11-year-old daughter are

SEE BOOK WORLD ON C3

BY RUTH EGLASH

jerusalem — When the parents

of 16-year-old Palestinian Mu-

hammad Abu Khdeir first report-

ed to Jerusalem police in the early

hours of July 2, 2014, that their son

had been kidnapped by a group of

Jewish settlers, few in authority

took it seriously.

For most Israelis, the idea that

Jews would go into an Arab neigh-

borhood and kidnap a boy was

incomprehensible. In the days

that followed, even after Abu Kh-

deir’s body was found torched and

abandoned in the Jerusalem for-

est, it remained unthinkable that

Jews could carry out such a brutal

hate crime.

The realization that Abu Khdeir

was murdered by Jews solely be-

cause he was an Arab — and the

atmosphere of extremism and rac-

ism that enabled it to happen —

are the central themes explored in

a highly charged HBO series that

premiered Aug. 12. The creators of

“Our Boys” describe its 10 episodes

as “the anatomy of a hate crime,”

deconstructing the personal, po-

litical and social events that took

place immediately before and af-

SEE JERUSALEM ON C2

For a local

journalist, having

your newspaper

snapped up by the

Gannett chain

never was a joyful

prospect.

Although

journalistically

respectable — and sometimes

excellent — the Virginia-based

company was known for its lean

newsroom staffs and its emphasis

on high profit margins.

But times have changed. As it

turns out, there are worse fates.

The recently announced

$1.4 billion merger with another

giant newspaper chain,

GateHouse Media, is not good

news for journalists at Gannett’s

nationally circulated flagship,

USA Today, or its prominent

regional papers, including the

Detroit Free Press, the

Indianapolis Star, the Des Moines

Register, the Milwaukee Journal

Sentinel and the Arizona

Republic.

GateHouse’s approach to its

newspapers in recent years has

made Gannett look almost

munificent by contrast. And

although Gannett’s name will be

attached to the new company,

GateHouse’s business practices

seem more likely to prevail.

The merger, if it happens,

means even deeper cost-cutting

in newsrooms that are already

hollowed out.

“There is no more real

newspaper in the city of

Worcester,” Mayor Joseph Petty

told Massachusetts radio show

Talk of the Commonwealth

recently after the Telegram —

owned by GateHouse — abruptly

laid off its veteran columnist,

Clive McFarlane, among others,

in yet another round of job

eliminations.

McFarlane, on Facebook,

blasted “the indignity of

corporate management.”

“After 26 years writing for this

community, I was

unceremoniously shown the door

today by Gatehouse, deprived

even of the long-established

protocol of allowing a columnist

to bid farewell to his readers,” he

wrote, according to Politico’s

Massachusetts Playbook.

None of this is positive news

for local journalism writ large,

which is in an existential crisis.

(The local newspaper business, in

the blunt assessment of investor

Warren Buffett, is “toast.”)

It’s a crisis that threatens

American democracy. Local

newspapers, despite all their

flaws and limitations, have been a

trusted — and necessary — source

of information for citizens across

the country.

When local news withers, bad

things happen, studies show.

People vote less, and they vote

SEE SULLIVAN ON C2

The news

gets worse

for local

journalism

Margaret

Sullivan

BOOK WORLD

Bad guys are scary, newsy

in Karin Slaughter’s latest

The lasting

lectures of

Toni Morrison

For decades, a giant of literature commanded

classrooms with wit, sensibility and grace

MICHAEL NORCIA/NEW YORK POST ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES

Toni Morrison is congratulated by Princeton students after she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.

‘Our Boys’: HBO unravels a hate crime in Jerusalem

RAN MENDELSON/HBO

Tzahi Grad and Shlomi Elkabetz, right, in HBO’s “Our Boys,” about Muhammad Abu Khdeir’s murder.