Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison is a fine novel exuberantly constructed and stylistically full of the author's own delight in words. Morrison has a strong narrative voice and much of her novel's charm comes from an oral tradition, the love of simply telling, for example, how places and people got their names and how these names—Not Doctor Street, Ryna's Gulch, a boy called Milkman, Mr. Solomon, women known as Pilate, Sing and Sweet—contain history. There is an enchantment in Morrison's naming, a heightening of reality and language. Though each name is almost mythical it can be explained factually…. In Song of Solomon lives are as strange as folk tales and no less magical when they are at last construed.
Toni Morrison has written a chronicle of a black family living in a small industrial city on the shores of Lake Michigan, but the method of the book is to enlarge upon the very idea of family history, to scrape away at lore until truth is revealed. (pp. 185-86)
This is a free excerpt of 168 words. There are 333 words (approx.
1 page at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Morrison, Toni 1931–: Critical Essay by Maureen Howard Access Pass.
