The Nobel Prize Winner-Morrison
November not only marks the publication of Toni Morrison’s eagerly
anticipated(期待)eighth novel, Love, but it is also the tenth anniversary of her
Nobel Prize for Literature. Morrison is the first black woman to receive a
Nobel, and so honored before her in literature are only two black men: Wole
Soyinka, the Nigerian playwright, poet and novelist, in 1986; and Derek Walcott,
the Caribbean-born poet, in 1992. But Morrison is also the first and only
American-born Nobel prize winner for literature since 1962, the year novelist
John Steinbeck received the award. Like Song of Solomon, Love
is a multigenerational story, revealing the personal and communal legacy(遗产)of
an outstanding black family. As Morrison scholars will tell you, Love is the
third volume of a literary master’s trilogy(三部曲) investigating the many
complexities of love. This trilogy began with Beloved(1988), which deals with a
black mother’s love under slavery and in freedom. Jazx(1993), the second volume,
tells a story of romantic love in 1920s Harlem. This latest novel looks back
from the 1970s to the 1940s and ’50s. The emotional center of
Love is Bill Cosey, the former owner and host of the shabby Cosey’s Hotel and
Resort in Silk, North Carolina, described in the novel as "the best and
best-known vacation sport for colored folk on the East Coast." We get to know
Cosey through the memories of five women who survive and love him: his
granddaughter, his widow, two former employees, and a homeless young
girl. The latest novel, Love, had been described in the
promotional material from her publisher as "Morrison’s most accessible work
since Song of Solomon." This comparison to her third hovel, published in 1977,
was an effective selling point. This trilogy is the best-seller.______