How am I supposed to take myself seriously as a writer after reading this? The first page alone made me feel like my ego had been run over by a car, flattening it Looney Tunes style.

For my money, this is probably the best thing I've read by Morrison, though I'm by no means an expert on her. I don't remember being half as enchanted by Beloved or Sula as I am by Song of Solomon. I was inspired to reread it by this thread and its comments, which are quite illuminating - another win for the intellectuals of the Red Scare Cinematic Universe. She's one of those writers I've consistently enjoyed, but whose body of work I haven't studied enough to have a fully fleshed-out opinion.

Approaching this through a religious rather than exclusively racial lens was especially enlightening. It occurred to me, at one point, that you could turn all of the characters in this novel white (though I would not advocate anyone do so) and, with minor modifications, it would probably still work. Most of the major themes and motifs would remain intact: the necessity of historical roots and ancestral knowledge, the importance of naming, the triumph of the collective over the individual, the corruption of the city and its inherently transactional nature, the spiritual rejuvenation of returning to the land and understanding your place in it. This is not necessarily a mark of quality, but an observation about how Morrison - who is often crammed solely into the "black literature" box and left sadly unexamined by other critical perspectives - transcended the framework posterity has forced on her.

Then again, I wonder if her aim here wasn't to give black Americans something that had been robbed from them: a national epic, a myth. Her prose obviously strives for that quality, and for the most part achieves it. (Though she does occasionally blunder - the final few lines are head-smackingly obvious, and at one point she compares red lipstick to "puppy penises.") The implication, I think, is not that Song of Solomon itself should be that mythic work. It's instead that every individual can, and should, and needs to, craft a myth of their own, hunting history down to illuminate their present and discover meaning in their lives.

Interesting to go from this to Dubliners (which, for the record, I also love) and see James Joyce screech about how much he hates Ireland's national heritage.