a mercy - Toni Morrison

I remember a scene in The Big Chill. William Hurt's character, permanently coked up, is watching some movie on late night television when Tom Beringer's character sits down and asks him what the movie is about. "I don't know," Hurt responds. "You're so analytical. Sometimes you have to let art flow over you."

That is almost always my reaction when reading Toni Morrison's works. Her speakers simply allow you as a reader to enter their lives at some point and to eaves drop on the goings on. They don't give you much help. There is no road map. No exposition to bring you up to speed. Morrison forces you to dive right in and figure out things for yourself. I have read every fiction she has written and the best ones (Beloved, Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye) all share that very Faulknerian characteristic. You read along, piecing things together, moving from bewilderment to the slow shock of recognition to enlightenment. I mean I still have to fight tears when I think of Paul D. rocking Sethe, saying "You your best thing, Sethe. You."

a mercy belongs with Morrison's best. Our main speaker here is Florens, a slave girl who is sold to a decent man as payment for a debt in lieu of cash. The slave owner originally tries to sell Florens' mother, but the mother rightly wangles them into taking her daughter instead. Just like Sethe's solution to the Fugitive Slave Act, this moment of "abandonment" by her mother serves as the seminal moment in the novel.

Like all of Morrison's work, we are afforded a grim, first person account from multiple speakers of the horrors of the beginnings of the slave trade, but it ends up being more of an investigation into the love between women who have their very existences defined by men or the absence of men.

There is the mistress, Rebekkah, herself not much more than white chattel; Lina, the slave who provides the rock that precariously holds all of these women together; Sorrow, whose lustful presence seems to supply some hope for an independent life; and Florens, whose love for a freeman blacksmith provides a focus for the narrative. But their dependence on men is the unforgettable emphasis of this beautiful little novel.

Rebekka arrives to America in the cargo hold of a ship, sharing the tiny space with a handful of other down and out ladies. She is the only one who actually has a future in the form of a prearranged marriage to Jacob Vaark. In the hold, as she listens to and receives comfort from the stories of her fellow passenger/victims she righly sees the parallel to Job's comforters who really don't talk about Job's problem at all. They simply talk about themselves. All comforters follow that trope. She reaches one of those thrilling insights that make Morrison's work so satisfying. Job didn't want answers from God; he only wanted to be noticed.

But then Job was a man. Invisibility was intolerable to men. What complaint would a female Job dare to put forth? And if, having done so, and He deigned to remind her of how weak and ignorant she was, where was the news in that? What shocked Job into humility and renewed fidelity was the message a female Job would have known and heard every minute of her life.

It is a thrilling moment. In fact it almost makes me want to teach AP again so I could do this novel along with "Job" and J. B.. Almost, but not quite.

If you are a Morrison fan and how could you not be, this is must reading.