Morrison Doesn't Rest on Her Nobel Laurels
A review by Carlin Romano
Old Nobel literature laureates die and sometimes fade away, but first they typically keep publishing amid an odd atmosphere that combines imperial hauteur and cloying deference. Readers take to the new books, even enjoy them, but without the frisson of discovery. Observing the launch of a Nobelist's latest can feel like watching the president descend the stairway from Air Force One, or the queen wave from her Buckingham Palace balcony. When Jean-Paul Sartre became the first and only writer to decline the prize, he announced that a writer should not permit himself to become a public institution. Sartre was onto something. What a pleasure, then, to watch 77-year-old Toni Morrison, the last literary Nobelist (1993) from a culture dismissed this year as "too insular" to merit the Swedish Academy's nod, bound into literature with her new book as if it were the first time, with the spry energy of a doe. A Mercy, her ninth novel and first in five years, is that beguiling and...
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