Newspapers / Winston-Salem State University Student … / Nov. 1, 1978, edition 1 / Page 8
Part of Winston-Salem State University Student Newspaper / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
by Dolan Hubbard Faculty Member Toni Morrison, “Song of Solomon” (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1977), $8.95, 377 pages or Signet Paper Back, $2.50 “Song of Solomon has played to nothing but rave reviews. This saga of four generations of black life in America has received a chorus of praise from “Time” and “News week”, has been reviewed on the front page of the New York “Times Book Review’, and was the main selection of the Book-of-the-month Club (the first by a black novelist since Richard Wright’s “Native Son” in 1940). Ralph Ellison’s “The Invisible Man (1952), a masterpiece by which ever standard one elects to use, was voted the most distin guished novel of the previous twenty-five years in a 1965 poll of two hundred writers and critics conducted by the New York H erald Tribune’s Book Week. “Song of Solo mon”, I feel, certainly has the credentials to be considered in as favorable a light. In it one sees strands and hears echoes of “The Bible, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Faulkner, Heller, and Lessing. Its themes, though not restricted to the twentieth century, reflect several of its prominent themes: aliena tion, isolation, the absurd, and the schizophrenic nature of our times. But above all, it is a story about man’s timeless search for his soul. “Song of Solomon” is one of those rare books that readily lends itself to be tasted, swallowed, chewed and diges- ted-its vocabulary can be handled by the average com petent eighth grader. Like all good literature, its comments on la condition humaine range from the elemental to the esoteric; however, one is not constantly bludgeoned into re membering didactic messag es. Toni Morrison’s charac ters are too busy being them selves. She recognizes that people are most human when they are themselves. Her characters are the personifi cation of blackness, the em bodiment of the black life style. Her significance lies in her fidelity to that life style and her deft evocation of its nuances and subtleties. She is certainly not myopic in her artistic vision for it encompas ses not only a private heritage, but a national one as well. “Song of Solomon (like Roots) heralds the arrival of a new epoch in Black American LETTERS. One of its endear ing qualities is its positive stance towards Black Ameri can culture. It is a love affair that positively recognizes the resiliency and durability the black life style as well as the richness, diversity, and beau ty of black America’s pungent, compressed, and highly color ful use of language. In “Song of Solomon”, we enter the world of the Macon Dead family, a “Fall of the House of Usher” type family. Macon is the richest black man in a midwestern town, a solidly middle-class citizen who married the only daugh ter of the only Black doctor the town ever had. Their union produced three children, two girls and one son, Macon Dead, Jr. (Known as Milk man.) Milkman is our eyes and ears. The story begins on the day of his birth, February 18, 1931. (He is the first black baby allowed to be bom at Mercy-- popularly called “No Mercy”--Hospital by the town’s black citizens). On the day of his birth the lonely insurance man, Robert Smith, poised in blue silk wings, attempts to fly from the stee ple of the hospital, a black Icarus looking homeward. This scene portends things to come, for Milkman will go from crawling to walking Dto running to flying. Much of the action takes place on Not Doctor Street, so Hut Shining Bright named by the blacks in spite of the white townfather’s efforts not to ‘officially’ recognize their Catfish Row type com munity, reminiscent of Porgy and Bess. Milkman’s reward for be coming a teenager is con scription into his father’s prin cipal business- a slum land lord. Milkman is assigned to collect rent payments. The freedom he gains by being out and about more than compen sates for some of the saltier aspects that come with the job. Additionally, he complet es his high school education. Thankful to be released from his death-haunted house with his strange, silent sisters and his immovably inert mother, who wants him to be a doctor, he begins the beginners se search for self. His love and combat with his friend Guitar, - their relationship culmina ting in a Cain and Abel pas de deux- propel him further out ward and away from his family. Paradoxically he is drawn closer to his family through his unconscious ap prenticeship with the matri- archial leader of the local pariahs: Pilate, his aunt he later discovered; her daugh ter, Reba; and her grand daughter, Hagar. Milkman has an exotic and almost spellbinding love affair with his love-blind cousin Hagar. Among other things, Pilate is a bootlegger, mystic, earth- mother plus she wears a brass box on one ear. Its contents serve as catalyst in catapul ting Milkman on the road to revelation and to Iself-disco- very. The fact that Pilate has no navel further sets her apart (“a stomach blind as a knee, something God never made”). Yet without her accumulated and sundry skills. Milkman never would have seen the light of day. He is the last male in the Macon Dead family, a fact that disturbs him not in the least. To learn and validate the truth about Pilate’s brass box, Milkman is drawn to the South, the ancestral home of his father’s people. His original lure was the prospect of retrieving some lost gold. His journey on the open road slingshots him from the mid west to Pennsylvania to Virgi nia to the Virginia tidewater basin. Each new adventure and each new kilometer not only brings him closer to his ancestral kin but they bring him closer towards who and what he is. Slung free of the urban centers with their con ceptions of civilization, Milk man becomes drastically less pretentious. His odyssey, in effect, becomes Black Amer ica’s search for identity and man’s timeless search for the human soul. One of the philosophical cen ters in the novel occurs in an exchange between Milkman and Circe, an old woman who provides him with invaluable information about his relatives got their names: “Milkman thought about this mixed wo man’s great-granddaughter, Hagar, and said, “Yes. I know what you mean.” But a good woman. I cried like a baby when I lost her. Like a baby. PoorSing.” “What?” He wondered if she lisped. “I cried like a baby when I-” “No. I mean, what did you call her?” ’’sing. Her name was Sing.” “Sing?’ Sing Dead. Where’d she get a name like that?” “Where’d you get a name like yours? White people name Negroes like race hors es.” (p. 243) The old woman’s straight out, matter-of-fact comment on life, a masterful stroke on the part of the artist, reminds the reader of Black America’s shared sense of the absurd. Toni Morrison, 47, a Howard University graduate, earned her Masters Degree from Cor nell. She has taught at Howard. Currently, she is a senior editor at Random House. Her previous novels are “The Bluest Eye” (1970) and “Sula” (1974) Newspaper Techniques Explained ROTC com . from page 4 By Vlveca Thomason The Alumni Hut can be seen glistening in the bright sun light on these cool autumn days thanks to Sears manager Mr. John Clark. Mr. Clark is a member of the Board of Trustees at Winston-Salem State University and is a member of the development committee of the Board. Mr. Clark donated sixty or more gallons of white paint for the Alumni Hut at the request of Chancellor Covington for the homecoming festivities. Army. The criteria for this highly competitive distinction is as follows: a. Demonstrate out standing leadership and moral character, b. Have a high aptitude for an interest in the military, c. be in the upper third of their ROTC class, and d. Be in the upper half of their academic class. Each student cadet has the opportunity to enter active duty afte commissioning or they may join a Reserve or National Guard component Cadets selected for the honors are: Cecil B. Cates, Willie C. Jordan, and Jerry M. Powers. By Vlveca L. Thomason Assignment Editor What do the terms layout, copy, cropping, and dummy ing have in common? They all deal with the production of a newspaper. These terms and techniques were introduced and explained to a group students of various majors in a Journalish workshop at Winston-Salem State Univer sity. It was conducted by Mr. John W. Templeton, the ex- excutive editor for the Salem Chronicle. Mr. Templeton addressed the audience first by saying, “How many black newspapers are there between Maryland and Georgia?” The answer is, about fifty. “And what makes these fifty black or any other newspapers successful? Arti cles which contain three main components of news.” The first half of the lecture was devoted to the components which are interest, utility, and significance. It was pointed out that each good article should develop these .compo nents. “Interest,” he added “involves whether or not the audience cares to read the article; utility concerns the articles’s usefulness, and sig nificance centers around the meaning the article has for the audience.” The second half of the workshop focused on the de sign of the newspaper. Mr. Templeton pointed out the four focus points of the news paper page. “Pictures,” he added, “should add decora tion as well as interest to a story.” He gave the group pointers on how and where to put pictures on the paper to present an attractive page. Mr. Templeton holds a Ba chelor of Arts degree in Jour nalism, graduating cum laude from Howard University. He has worked with the Afro-A merican newspapers as a re porter and copy editor, the Washington Post and in radio and television. This year, he won the Frank L. Stanley Award of The National News paper Publishers Association. He was adjunct professor at Virginia State College, re search associate for the South eastern Black Press Institute at UNC, and now serves on the advisory board for North Caro lina Institute for Open Journa lism.
Winston-Salem State University Student Newspaper
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Nov. 1, 1978, edition 1
8
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75