How to Describe Toni Morrison's Writing Style?
I recently took a course in college where I had the opportunity to read four novels written by Toni Morrison. After, someone asked me to describe what it was like — what would I tell someone who had never read a Morrison book to expect from their first one?
You would think that reading four of an author’s novels would give you a handle on their writing style, but something about Toni Morrison’s prose defies easy definition. I’m sure many people, academics and otherwise, have attempted to pin down whatever it is that makes her sentences seem so light when they are so long, but I think that if you could do that, you’d have a Pulitzer or a Nobel just like she does.
If I had to try, though, I’d try to figure out what it is that sits between her words. She gathers words that normally don’t play nicely together and gives them something to hold on to, and suddenly it works. The words she chooses to put next to one another -- it’s like making lemonade and putting mint in it, or like putting salt and chocolate together: you would have never thought of it yourself, but something about it seems comfortable. It’s coming up with phrases like “thin love”, or “friend of my mind”, or a “loneliness that roams” or a “loneliness that rocks”, or the concept of surrendering to the air. It’s telling a story but not starting at the beginning, or starting somewhere and then dancing around it.
Her writing is universally accessible because of that, because her words are so comfortable together. Even though her stories are about individual people, they make sense to anyone with a heart, so I think a first time reader needs no training or warning label to start in on her words and the characters they portray. I would, maybe, tell them to keep a pencil and piece of paper nearby, though. I can’t list how many of her phrases I’ve copied down or committed to memory. But even that might be inessential advice, because some of her phrases stick with me even when I don’t ask them to. And I’m sure that happens to everyone.
Four novels later, and her words continue to surprise and delight. There is no stopping them, and they have a life of their own. I must have read over a hundred thousand of them at this point, each one right after the other, and for me it has been exactly like sitting in the sun and drinking a cool glass of mint lemonade.