I have only one complaint with Toni Morisson's work, and until I read this book it was just a vague impression, but I now percieve it to be a pattern. She clearly has few peers when it comes to inventive characterization that skillfully treads the line between the mythological and the possible (much like Gabriel Garcia Marquez). Similarly, she creates stories that feel as though they have existed for for generations, and have simply been passed on for her to transcribe. Nonetheless, I always leave her books a little bit dissatisfied. While the stories that compose her novels are themselves are juicy and indisputably alive, they have the feel of being strung together haphazardly, and the novel as a whole suffers.
Song of Solomon, for instance, seems to have three verdant threads running through it. Milkman and Pilate each have a clear line running through the book, and it is my personal opinion that Guitar's story is separate from either of them, even though it is not as elaborate. Each story is, as I cannot state clearly enough, the sort of story that is so alive, one wonders if some version of it might have happened. It would make this book a masterpiece of craftsmanship instead of a delight, though, if all three stories came together in the end to some sort of resolution. In short, I love Morrison's books until they end. I always feel like there should be more, that something clever should have happened to make the reader satisfied. Instead I am left feeling like I followed a trail at length, only to be left standing abruptly at the edge of a cliff. "Where do I go from here?", I ask myself. In fact, I think I'll stop right now to show you how it feels.
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I think that her dissonance of not resolving everything and not tieing everything together is her point. That is what happens in life. I realize that part of the reason one reads a novel is for the tidy endings, but I think that she is trying to capture reality and magic at the same time.
I guess that her "perfection" still ends with longing. There is chili in her chocolate. That slap that the new knight receives when he raises from his knees so that there is pain to go with the joy of the day....
All that you say is technically accurate. But I can't escape the feeling that she just got bored and stopped writing. It felt at the end of the book like she had so much more to offer. The story was so alive, so believable, that the characters deserved more.
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