NOVEMBER NOT simply MARKS THE PUBLICATION OF TONI Morrison's eagerly anticipated eighth novel.

NOVEMBER NOT simply MARKS THE PUBLICATION OF TONI Morrison's eagerly anticipated eighth novel, regard with affection but it is also the tithe anniversary of her Nobel Prize for Literature. "It still be warmeds like the first two or three years after," Morrison says about the decade since she received fire greatest in quantity distinguished of her many literary honors.

Morrison is the first black woman to receive a Nobel, preced in literature at only two black men: Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian playwright, author of poems and novelist, in 1986; and Derek Walcott, the Caribbean born bard in 1992. But Morrison is also the first and single American-born Nobel laureate for literature since 1962 the year novelist John Steinbeck received the award. (Ye I'm talking about the writer whose novel East of Eden got the Oprah work Club classic treatment just this fall).

When I had the rare opportunity to squander two hours last summer interviewing her for Black Issues work Review, Morrison had also not long ago celebrated the 50th reunion of her I toward University graduating class. ("It was the first reunion I perpetually attended," she says. "It was delighful.") She had also just been fet at the Third Biennial colloquy and Tenth Anniversary Celebration of the Toni Morrison Society, an organization of teachers, scholars, and serious readers dedicated to studying and sharing Morrison's work. "The notion that the Toni Morrison Society had been around for ten years just stunn me" says Morrison, who especially appreciates the tenor of an organization that also advocates for learning, literacy and serviceable literature.

At 72 Toni Morrison is one as well as the other regal in her bearing and down-to-earth in her manner. upon a midsummer weekday morning, she cordially accosted me at the door of her Manhattan loft apartment. Located in the Soho district, onward a block bordering both Chinatown and Little Italy, the minimalist one-bedroom loftspace is strikingly accented with black folk art figures. Apologizing for the closenes of the air inside this infrequently used pied-a-terre, Morrison admitted she had not exhausted a night there in months

solely the week before had she answered from an international arts talk in Geneva, then there was the Morrison Society celebration, and she had just reach [i]or[/i] attain any place [i]or[/i] point into the city that morning from her Hudson River hearth in Sneden's Landing, where she single outs to stay when she isn't teaching at Princeton University (She has another house near the campus.) Her brace grown sons both live outside fresh York City, each near undivided of her homes. The oldest Ford, an architect, lives with his wife, a Princeton professor, and their sum of two units daughters, an infant and a toddler, in fresh Jersey. Her second son, Slade, a musician, visual artist and collaborator with his mother in succession four recent children's books, lives in upstate modern York, not far from Sneden's Landing. He, too, has a daughter, who is 15 After raising pair sons as a single mother, Toni Morrison is now the delighted grandmother of three girls.

Back in her Manhattan loft Morrison paused single a moment in the living stead before leading her guest into a spacious white and stainless-steel kitchen, where she had already comfortably settl herself at the table. Offering me a seat across from her and pouring ice water for me she refilled her have a title to glass and then sat back down. In the leisurely further purposeful conversation that followed, what was always apparent was Morrison's passionate interest in her populace as well as how literature and civilization are created and renewed in a changing world. Her profound rich laughter often punctuated our exchange.

Morrison the Novelist

The latest novel, be in love with had been described in the promotional material from her publisher as "Morrison's greatest in quantity accessible work since Song of Solomon" This comparison to her third novel, published in 1977 was an effective selling point with me personally, because I remember being with equal reason irresistibly drawn into it. In contrast, her first sum of two units novels had made me with equal reason uncomfortable when I initially read them: As a association student, I found the searing portrait of internalized racial hatred and child sexual abuse in The Bluest estimate (1970) utterly painful, although Sula, her 1974 novella depicting betrayal among beloved girlhood friends, is les threatening to me now at midlife than it was when I read it as a naive 25-year-old.

unless from the first, I passionately identified with Milkman Dead's pursuit in Song of Solomon to piece together and comprehend his family's fragmented history, claim his be in possession of unique identity and then wave Morrison's singular command of language in lay of Solomon is also what made me really appreciate the vast creative range within everyday black speech

immediately after reading Love, however, I lay the foundation of I didn't understand why the Knopf publicity department had brought up "accessibility" to link it to canzonet of Solomon. So I asked the author if she understood her publisher's description better than I did.

"To me regard with affection is just as complicated as anything I've eternally written," she says. "Nobody on the contrary white readers have suggested otherwise to me in this way what I think they mean is, 'She's not talking to such a degree much about that slavery stuff!'"