1981The generation gap between the retirement-age black couple who are the servants [originally from Philadelphia] and their jetset highly educated and sophisticated niece -- perhaps foreshadows the generation gap in The Butler.A small cast of characters who all interact. Diversity in wealth, race, occupation, education.Morrison treats us to some insights into race relations and colonialism/third world relations, which we always need to learn more about. Mostly she teaches us through the story and the characters, or through brief passages, but there is one longish essay in the book [174-75]:"although Valerian [white millionaire on private island in the Caribbean, perhaps off Haiti] had taken the sugar and cocoa and paid for it as though it had no value, as though the cutting of cane and picking of beans was child's play and had no value; but he turned it into candy [his inherited wealth came from a candy factory in the US], the invention of which really was child's play, and sold it to other children and made a fortune in order to move near, but not in the midst of, the jungle where the sugar came from and build a palace with more of their labor and then hire them to do more of the work he was not capable of and pay them again according to some scale of value that would outrage Satan himself and when those people wanted a little of what he wanted, some apples for their Christmas, and took some, he dismissed them with a flutter of the fingers, because they were thieves, and nobody knew thieves and thievery better than he did and he probably thought he was a law-abiding man, they all did, and they all always did, because they had not the dignity of wild animals who did not eat where they defecated but they could defecate over a whole people and come there to live and defecate some more by tearing up the land and that is why they loved property so, because they had killed it soiled it defecated on it and they loved more than anything the places where they shit. Would fight and kill to own the cesspools they made, and although they called it architecture it was in fact elaborately built toilets, decorated toilets, toilets surrounded with and by business and enterprise in order to have something to do in between defecations since waste was the order of the day and the ordering principle of the universe. And especially the Americans who were the worst because they were new at the business of defecation spent their whole lives bathing bathing bathing washing away the stench of the cesspools as though pure soap had anything to do with purity. That was the sole lesson of their world: how to make waste, how to make machines that made more waste, how to make wasteful products, how to talk waste, how to study waste, how to design waste, how to cure people who were sickened by waste so they could be well enough to endure it, how to mobilize waste, legalize waste and how to despise the culture that lived in cloth houses and shit on the ground far away from where they ate [presumably the local working class Dominicans]. And it would drown them one day, they would all sink into their own waste and the waste they had made of the world and then, finally they would know true peace and the happiness they had been looking for all along. In the meantime this one here [Valerian] would chew a morsel of ham and drink white wine secure in the knowledge that he had defecated on two people who had dared to want some of his apples."[I am not certain if the above is meant to be in the mind of the world-wise but not formally educated Son from a small black township in Florida. Probably so.]I am certain I read a Morrison book a few years ago, but it's not in my goodreads file, maybe i read it longer ago than i think.
i have a great idea for a wildly over-the-top romance novel. slap a likeness of blair underwood on the cover, airbrush some dreadlocks on his head, a tropical landscape in the back… ready? ready: crazy dreadlocked black man is found hiding in the closet of a wealthy white couple’s carribean house. rather than take him to the police, Valerian Street (the white millionaire) invites him to dinner. now check it: Valerian and Margaret (a former beauty queen!) have two black servants who have a niece, Jade, who Valerian has sponsored (sent to college, paid her way through life) and has become a glamorous model. no shit: cover of vogue, seal-skin jackets, homes in paris, new york, etc. so the black intruder, named Son, comes down for dinner after a shower, shave, and change of clothes and… he is gorgeous. and smart. and, although uneducated, has quite a bit to say about class and race. so a giant fight breaks out at dinner resulting in Valerian’s former beauty queen wife calling her servants niggers. mayhem ensues. okay. now we move from ‘enter the stranger’ to ‘fish out of water’, yeah? Son and Jade fall in love and take off for new york city but Son's rejection of the rat race and Jade’s trendy lifestyle causes problems. so they go down to Son’s home town of eloe, florida. no better. Jade can’t deal with the backwoods mentality of the place. class tensions run high and Son and Jade break up. she sneaks back to Ryk her paris-dwelling millionaire white boyfriend. Son quickly realizes his mistake and heads back to the carribean to find out where Jade is. Gideon, the gardner known as ‘Yardman’ to white folks, cautions Son against chasing after Jade, but ultimately tells him where she is. Son sets off on a boat heading into thick fog as the book ends… Whattaya think? I think some serious as shit bank if we can get Nora Roberts or Jo Beverly to write this bitch. wait. what? what's that? um. toni morrison? pulitzer winner? nobel winner? toni fucking morrison. you mean way serious badass toni morrison. wait. she wrote a book with this exact plot. no fucking way. yes way. and tar baby is total toni morrison overload. i mean, she really piles it on in this one. crazed plot notwithstanding, we get black against white. dark-skinned against light-skinned. rich against poor. master against servant. man against woman. city against country. educated against street smart.and we get some virtuoso moments because, yeah, toni morrison's writing it. also interesting is that it’s the rare morrion novel set in the modern day so all her characters are not merely cogs in the machinery, but fully aware (although sometimes delusional) of the machinations. but, much of the time it plays out not like a romance novel, but like one of those early mike leigh films made for british television. entertaining, interesting characterization, some intelligent political/social insight, but kind of stiff, forced, a little off. like watching a stage play on television. if morrison had more of a sense of humor about this one, a degree of irreverency, if she framed it as a kind of teorema (oh pasolini, you demented and lovely pinko fag…) it would’ve worked better. but that somber tone, relying on such tropes to advance her story, and with such clear conflicts between all society’s warring factions... it felt kinda like john waters by way of stanley kramer.
Do You like book Tar Baby (2004)?
Wow, I was pleasantly surprised by the depth and eloquence in this book. The relationship between and within races and sexes and cultures is so incredibly insightful. Toni does not hold back comments that might make the reader ouncomfortable and i found myself laughing at the reality of the characters reactions (specifically to finding Son in the closet). I have to admit i was infuriated by the lack of closure to the book...i got to the last sentence praying that there was another chapter hiding somewhere. I even had to reread a chapter to see if i missed something about the ending, but alas it just ends abruptly.
—Jasmine Star
I haven't read all of Toni Morrison's novels (Sula, Paradise, Love) but I have read most of them. Out of her novels that I've read, Tar Baby is easily the most digestible. Not to say that it doesn't have depth, it's just a little easier to read and more mainstream. If someone came up to me and said they wanted to start reading Morrison, and I knew they weren't strong, attentive readers, I would definitely recommend this book.It's her most modern book. The story takes place during the '70s, and it dwells into issues that black women of our era go through--lack of identity, the riff between older generations and new generations, and modern civilization vs. nature.Even though Tar Baby touches on those themes, the story is more accessible, because, in essence, what Tar Baby is is a classic love story. Two characters, who are seemingly total opposites and who come from entirely different backgrounds, meet and unexpectedly fall in love. Of course if you know Morrison you know this isn't the entire story, and elements of their relationship do get more complicated. This book is beautifully written. My favorite element of the novel would have to be the island that she creates that almost seems like it's living and breathing. You could almost feel the humanity while reading. Really, an amazing job. I also enjoyed the ending in this book. Morrison, has a tendency to end her books in a way that can be too ambiguous and, sometimes, somewhat unsatisfying. I didn't feel this way at the end of Tar Baby, even though there is a lot of room for interpretation, I still felt satisfied, and the book didn't end in a Disney type of neat ribbon, either. Any negatives I have would be nitpicking. The only thing I can say is that I think Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye better, and Beloved are all better books, but that really isn't fair, because those are all time classic books. I would highly recommend Tar Baby, especially if you are knew to Morrison.
—Dimas
Prose as purple as an eggplant. Lacking cohesion, theme, even plot. A most random assortment of characters (all one dimensional and caricatures, mind you) thrown together on an island (equally one dimensional and caricatured). What? How? But why? No one has a clue. It's a painful book, and doesn't say much about anything. Oh, it does say a little about race--but nothing more than affirming the racial and gender stereotypes of the "dangerous black criminal" and the "plastic-beautiful woman". The prose gets tiring, unpleasant, and after a few pages, even words, it gets difficult to motive oneself to continue reading. Overall, it makes a fantastic book, but only as a paperweight, a door-stopper, or something along those lines.
—Abhi. V. Varma
