Everybody says, ‘‘well, okay, so you wroteThe
Bluest Eye...’’;well, everybody was looking for
her next book, and they thought, ‘‘well, this is
going to be the formula, and she’s gonna put it
out,’’ and she came back withSula. ‘‘Oh, well,
that must be an accident.’’ Then she came back
withSong of Solomon, and we don’t understand.
So, she’s in danger right now, becauseTar Baby,
which is, absolutely, I think, an incredible novel,
is now being considered trivial, because nobody
can write four brilliant books. That is not possi-
ble; therefore, it couldn’t be brilliant. I mean
that’s the way the critics have been sort of
going at that, and, of course, the Black press
has been going at her with that, and this is not
each and every, but the Black intellectuals are
saying ‘‘well she just writes bestsellers.’’ Well,
that’s not really true at all. What she does is
write extremely well. I talked to Toni recently,
and I said, ‘‘we’re living in the age of Toni Mor-
rison.’’ And I’m not, have no interest really in
trying to flatter her, but the reality is that Toni
writes so well that the rest of us who write will
have to come up to that. And I think it is fright-
ening to, especially, that group of white men—
the Philip Roths, Norman Mailers—who have
dominated literature for some unknown reason,
because it certainly was not based on talent, that
all of a sudden, they’re coming up against a
Black woman from the Midwest who is clearly,
clearly brilliant. And if we were going to com-
pare Toni to somebody in terms of literature, we
would probably have to go to South America,
theOne Hundred Years of Solitude. Marquez.
You get into that level. Americans and Euro-
peans have considered themselves quite fine
with the novel. I think that they’re really devoid
of ideas.
And, again, some of the lovelier novels that
have been written lately have been done, in fact, by
women, not only Toni, but a woman, Elizabeth
Forsyth Hale,A Woman of Independent Means.
It’s gotten ripped off eight thousand different
ways: ‘‘A woman of substance,’’ ‘‘A woman in a
corner pigging’’; they picked it off. It was a collec-
tion of letters about a woman, from her first camp
letters. Her great-granddaughter found her trunk,
and she had kept all these letters. It’s nothing but
literature; that’s one of the problems. You can’t
turn it into a movie; it won’t be a hit song; you
have to read the book. But it’s absolutely, abso-
lutely gorgeous. And, of course, it had a very
difficult time finding a publisher, because nobody
understood it.
Judith [Guest] was, I think, lucky if you can
use that term, becauseOrdinary Peoplewas quite
an extraordinary novel, and it just so happens
that Bob Redford is literate, which many, many
people are not. And it seemed that he thought,
‘‘well, I should make a movie out of it,’’ which, of
course, helped to move that along. But, you
know, that came over the transom. That was,
‘‘I wrote this book. Would you consider it?’’ And
now, ‘‘we don’t know you: where’s your agent?’’
And you wonder what we’re losing.A Woman of
Independent Meanswent out of print. It only
sold everything, right? I think the publisher
must have put out about 1500 copies, and they
went, whoosh, and all of a sudden he says, ‘‘Oh
thank God I got out of that!’’ It was the inde-
pendent book sellers, who I think are very, very
important to all of us. Independents were saying,
‘‘but we’re recommending this book, and we
can’t get it.’’ And he’s saying, ‘‘there’s no market
for a middle book.’’ A book either, right now,
gets at least $250,000 to a half-million dollars in
advance, you know, in terms of a paperback, or
there’s no room. So, you have a book that’s
coming in at a $20,000 advance, and they don’t
know what they’re going to do with it. So,
finally, it got picked up, because somebody,
some place—I’m sure it’s some little old gray-
haired lady—read it and said, ‘‘well why don’t
we buy this?’’
Which poets do you read?
Most of us, most of the time. It’s probably
not fair to say it like this, but I don’t really think
that I read poetry for the pleasure of it. I’m
interested in the profession. So I don’t look at
poetry the way I do the novel, for example,
because I’m not basically a novel reader. So, it
has to be something to really capture me. I read
mostly nonfiction.
A particular category?
History.
I thought you were going to say that.
Yes, I really have a great love of history and,
of course, as you can see, politics. I do a lot with
history and politics, which are not all that
different.
I bear special affection for the poetry of
Anne Sexton. I think ‘‘Her Kind’’ is just one of
the most outstanding single poems I’ve ever
read. And I like a young poet, who in my opinion
does not write enough, named Carolyn Rodgers,
a Chicago poet. But for the most part, you readWinter