{"id":138535,"date":"2019-08-06T13:49:41","date_gmt":"2019-08-06T17:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=138535"},"modified":"2019-08-09T11:39:32","modified_gmt":"2019-08-09T15:39:32","slug":"remembering-toni","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/06\/remembering-toni\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Toni"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fran Lebowitz, Danez Smith, and Pam Houston reflect on the impact Toni Morrison had on their lives.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Toni Morrison (Photo \u00a9 Timothy Greenfield-Sanders)<\/p><\/div>\n

I met Toni in 1978. The Academy of American Poets sent me a letter. They had a reading series where they put two writers together and the guy asked me, \u201cDo you know who Toni Morrison is?\u201d She wasn\u2019t that well known then. I said, \u201cYes.\u201d And he said, \u201cDo you like her work?\u201d I said, \u201cI love her work!\u201d Then he asked if I wanted to read with her, and I said, \u201cThat\u2019s ridiculous! I can hardly think of a writer I have less in common with.\u201d But we became best friends instantly. I mean instantly. Right afterward, Toni said, \u201cWe should go on the road together!\u201d I always knew how old Toni was. She was exactly twenty years older than me.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a thing that most people don\u2019t know about Toni: Toni was one of the most fun people I\u2019ve ever known. And I am an expert on fun. When Toni won the Nobel Prize, she took a bunch of people with her, including me, and she called us the Nobelettes. When I got to Stockholm, there was a message at the front desk: call Toni immediately. I said, \u201cOkay, I\u2019ll call from my room,\u201d and they said no, you have to call her immediately. They were very excited that she was there. So I called from the desk and Toni said, \u201cFran, I need your help.\u201d She had two things. \u201cYou have to help me with my speech, and I don\u2019t know which gloves to wear.\u201d I went to her room and it was just a sea of clothes and gloves. I mean clothes everywhere. The Nobel Prize ball, which you may never attend, is white tie, and, at least at the time, women wore opera gloves. The gloves were the first thing, the most important thing. Toni loved clothes. Manolo Blahnik was a friend of mine, so I arranged for her to get some shoes from him for the ball. I don\u2019t think he knew her writing, but he loved her. Sue Newhouse once gave Toni a Judith Leiber bag\u2014do you know what those are? You can look it up on your device. She made these extremely expensive bags, bejeweled, in the shape of raspberries or the Queen of England. And this was something that Toni just adored. She said, \u201cWhy don\u2019t other people think of this?\u201d I said, \u201cWell, Toni, these things cost thousands of dollars!\u201d But the best thing to give Toni was dessert.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This is another thing most people don\u2019t know about Toni: though she was incredibly hardworking, she was physically incredibly lazy. The first time we went to dinner and a movie together\u2014this was shortly after we met\u2014we got out of the movie, and she said, \u201cLet\u2019s get a cab.\u201d I said, \u201cToni, the restaurant\u2019s five blocks away.\u201d But we took a cab. And she loved, more than anything, dessert. As soon as we sat down, she would choose dessert, probably the most unhealthy thing you could eat on the menu. And you would know that all during dinner she was thinking about it. She would eat only three bites of her dinner, and then she would look at you. If she was a child, you would have said, \u201cNo!\u201d But I would just say, \u201cFine, do what you will.\u201d Toni didn\u2019t really like New York. She was not an urban person. She would say, \u201cLet\u2019s go downtown,\u201d about a certain place that was actually up. She couldn\u2019t remember restaurants, she would just say, \u201cIs this the restaurant that has the peach pie?\u201d That was one of her main interests in life, dessert. When Toni\u2019s mother was alive\u2014so this was a long time ago\u2014we had this bet going. Toni was always talking about her mother\u2019s apple pie. And my mother was the Albert Einstein of apricot strudel. Toni and I had a bet on which was better. I pointed out that my mother also made apple pie, while her mother had never even heard <\/em>of apricot strudel. I think I won that way. Once I said to Toni, \u201cThe amount of sugar you eat!\u201d And she said, \u201cYou know, sometimes even sugar isn\u2019t sweet enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

I asked Toni for advice all the time, but I almost never took it. The advice was always from the point of view of Toni. When I was young, my mom would say, \u201cBe the bigger person.\u201d And I would say, \u201cNo, I am by nature the smaller person.\u201d Toni was the biggest person I\u2019ve ever known. She couldn\u2019t understand my inability to forgive. Toni would always take into account the problems that the person you were angry at had, and I wouldn\u2019t. I always knew she was right, but I didn\u2019t always do what she said. The things that made her angry were the things that made everybody angry. Do you know a woman who isn\u2019t angry? You don\u2019t. Do you know a black person who isn\u2019t angry? A person Toni\u2019s age? Because whatever\u2019s wrong now, things were a zillion times more wrong then. Considering where she started and where she ended up, if you were the grudge holder I am, it would be impossible. People who aren\u2019t in a constant state of fury aren\u2019t paying attention. But Toni was paying attention. She was simply above it rather than swamped by it. I don\u2019t know how you do this, because I cannot do this. People use the word compassionate<\/em> a lot, and I don\u2019t know many people who really are. Toni was. And forgiving. She was forgiving. Forgiveness is something I have no connection to. I would tell Toni, that\u2019s the difference between Jews and Gentiles. I would say, \u201cThis guy did this to you.\u201d And she would just say, \u201cYeah, yeah, yeah.\u201d She was an enormous human. I\u2019ve known lots of very smart people in my life, but Toni was the wisest.<\/p>\n

When Toni was in the hospital several years ago, for a hip replacement, many people were visiting her, bringing her special editions of Proust, et cetera. I brought her the National Enquirer<\/em>, Star<\/em>, all the trashy tabloids that were still in print at the time, and a bunch of candy bars. Someone from Princeton said, \u201cHow could you give these things to Toni Morrison?\u201d I said, \u201cHow could you not? You think she hasn\u2019t already read Proust? She hasn\u2019t read the newest edition of the National Enquirer<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once I was working on something and Toni asked to read it. She said, \u201cDo you want my suggestion?\u201d And I said, \u201cNo, I do not.\u201d But she said, \u201cI have just one suggestion: here, where you say \u2018you,\u2019 you should say \u2018we.\u2019\u201d And I said, \u201cWhy?\u201d She said, \u201cBecause that invites the reader in.\u201d I said, \u201cI don\u2019t want to invite the reader in. I\u2019m not a hostess, I\u2019m a prosecutor.\u201d But Toni did invite people in. That was her Toni-ness.<\/p>\n

\u2014Fran Lebowitz (as told to <\/em>The Paris Review)<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The first time I came across a book by Toni Morrison, I didn\u2019t read it. Song of Solomon<\/em> sat on my dresser unopened until it was too late and I was panicking, plagiarizing an essay on the novel for my eleventh-grade English class. Thank God I got caught. My teacher failed me for the paper, but made me reread the book and submit an essay anyway. At the time, I thought she wanted to teach me a lesson about following through on a task. But from where I am now, I can see that she was saying, \u201cYou\u2019re not allowed to miss this. You need to see what Morrison has written for you.\u201d Toni Morrison is, to me, the best writer the English-speaking world has ever seen. The best novelist, one of the best essayists, one hell of an editor, and, sometimes, one of our greatest poets in the midst of her prose. By the time I came to the world, there was no question that this black woman from Ohio, writing about black people in the Midwest, was one of the greats. What does that do to a young black writer? To a generation of black writers and writers of color? By Morrison\u2019s example, we knew we could write ourselves and our people with love, rigor, and intention. We knew that bending our writing toward the comfort of some imagined white reader was only a distraction from the good and necessary work of achieving and dreaming up our people. We knew that the best writers don\u2019t just clear space for their own name, but transform their abundance into the wealth of many. Morrison did the thing. She lived a mighty life. She was loved, and asked us to love harder. She wrote and we\u2019ll be trying to catch up to her forever. Morrison is the foundation. I\u2019m wrecked to see her go, but as I sit here I can\u2019t help but think about all she did, all she enabled, all she built, all she dreamed, all those she invited into the room. Rest, Toni. You did magnificent. You took this language they beat into our people and made us a feast. Thank you for making us better.\u00a0 Thank you for it all.<\/p>\n

\u2014Danez Smith<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In 2004, a few months before the publication of Toni Morrison\u2019s Love<\/em>, Oprah Winfrey selected me to do an interview with her and flew me to Manhattan to do it. No author had meant more to me as a young writer and to say I felt unworthy only scratches the surface. In preparation for the interview, I reread all of Morrison\u2019s books, in order, from The Bluest Eye<\/em> to Paradise<\/em>, and then I read the galley of Love<\/em> twice. I decided that I would not prepare any questions in advance, because I wanted our conversation to be spontaneous and fluid, free to travel anywhere it might.<\/p>\n

In the cab on the way downtown to her apartment, I asked myself what the eff I had been thinking by not preparing questions, but it was too late to change my mind. I had a younger brain then, and a better memory, and I had devoted the prior three weeks to nothing but her words. I could cross-reference themes and metaphors and characters, and I could see her project as a whole, the intelligent, instinctual, deeply necessary arc of it. I was as ready as I ever would be for our talk.<\/p>\n

Toni put me at ease the second I entered her apartment. I spent the next two hours engaged in meaningful conversation with the most articulate, most generous, most enlivened mind I have ever had the good fortune to be near. I say with great humility that she enjoyed the conversation, too, which is the reason she gave for inviting me to lunch, at her favorite French bistro around the corner, where our conversation broadened but never shallowed. After that we went shoe shopping at a store that exists as a fairy tale in my memory, carrying only the tiny, brightly colored Italian slippers Toni loved, each one seemingly made of glass. From there to the appliance store to check out a new stove she was considering for her house up on the Hudson, and then to the local bodega, for cigarettes, where the young boys whose dreadlocks were nearly as long as hers high-fived her, and called her Tooooo-ni<\/em> and teased her mercilessly (to her great delight).<\/p>\n

Back on the steps of her apartment, she invited me to stay for dinner.<\/p>\n

I said, \u201cYou know, this has been the single best day of my professional life. All you really want from your heroes is for them not to be assholes, but I had so many unrealistic expectations of you, and you have exceeded every one. I think I should take a deep bow of gratitude and call it a day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Toni frowned. \u201cThere is a woman who\u2019s coming to dinner,\u201d she said, \u201ca friend. She\u2019s a little difficult. I\u2019d appreciate it if you would stay.\u201d<\/p>\n

After dinner, I shared a cab with Toni\u2019s friend back up to Midtown. \u201cOh my God,\u201d I said, as soon as the cab pulled away from the curb. \u201cI have never imagined a human being could be so powerful, so well spoken, so self-possessed, so wise, so funny \u2026 I didn\u2019t expect her to be so funny \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCareful,\u201d her friend said, \u201cyou\u2019re gushing.\u201d<\/p>\n

We were flying up Park Avenue. It was late enough that we were making all the lights, and a light rain was falling, smearing the macadam with reflected color.<\/p>\n

The friend said, \u201cYou know why I don\u2019t read her books?\u201d She exhaled a mouth of smoke, bouncing it straight off the surface of the cab\u2019s NO SMOKING<\/small> sign.<\/p>\n

I shook my head.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t read her books because if I did, I wouldn\u2019t be able to say, Fuck you, Toni.\u201d<\/p>\n

I let another five blocks whizz by before I said, \u201cWell, I think you are needlessly impoverishing yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cab dropped me off on the edge of Times Square, and I wandered around in a love-daze for hours. I stumbled into the Colony and bought a bunch of cheesy sheet music, a gesture which, for reasons I don\u2019t entirely understand, put enough of a cap on that greatest of days that I could finally return to my hotel room and fall into bed.<\/p>\n

\u2014Pam Houston<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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