Some call Toni Morrison’s work “anti-White ” and “pornographic.” Others call it “heroic” and “liberatory.” I am sure it is a healthy ganache, or perhaps a pâté, or a compote, or aPad Thai of all those things. Her work is delicious. Yet that is as far as I can go.
I realized today that I am not allowed to have an opinion on Toni Morrison or her work, because fundamentally, I don’t know a goddamn thing about her. Most importantly, I don’t know if she is alive or dead. This seems like something I should know, because I am third-generation dirty White and go to college. Also, everybody is always talking about Toni Morrison. I just want to know if she is dead as bricks or not!
Honesty about a touchy subject like this is bound to get me in trouble. I am not afraid to say it, although it might be controversial – how old do we think Toni Morrison is or was? If you think about it, I am very courageous for asking. I have more courage than she did when she wrote The Bluest Eye (I think), or … Sula? Haha, just kidding – I only knew the first one. I had to ask my hot girlfriend about what else she wrote.
Oh wait, how could I forget! Didn’t she write Beloved! And… Queer Eye! Isn’t that the one with book where – haha, got you again! I don’t have the deadest dog’s wits about anything she has done, ever! You’d have to finish my sentence to tell me, because I sure can’t. Does anybody know if Toni Morrison is still finishing sentences? Or is she a festering corpse in the ground? If she is dead, that means I am by default a better author, and certainly more important. Take that, Toni!
Someone might need to call in a wellness check on her. I haven’t heard anything recently. Has she gotten any awards in the last few years? What are the big ones — Pulitzer, a Luigi Mangione entry on Goodreads — no, I don’t think she’s gotten any of those! Not even the highest praise of all: an article in the New York TImes Book Review!
To be honest though, it’s not about publicity. It’s not about awards or acclaim. None of those things matter. (To me.) If she got an EGOT last week, I wouldn’t give a shit. That is because I know, for a fact, that I don’t know anything about Toni Morrison, and my algorithm wouldn’t tell me anyway. I also know, for a fact, that she doesn’t need any awards, because she wrote one of my favorite books Song of Solomon. Have you ever read Song of Solomon? Just joking, got you again! My girlfriend told me about that one too! Please, please just tell me if she is alive or dead!! And is she still hot?!?!!
Okay, okay, I’ll get down to brass facts. Put my balls on the chopping block, cut them off, and double my bet on the family farm, because I’d wager she is as dead as a pewter doorknob. I have never heard a name as old as Toni Morrison. If I had to make one up that sounds just as dead and ancient, it’d be Huxtable Barnyard Hootowl Finch, and he’d be born in the 1930s! God, just tell me – was Toni Morrison born later or earlier than that?! I need to know in case I want to make fuck-me eyes at a writing postgrad! Help me!!!
Okay, final guess—Toni Morrison is as dead as the cold hard ground her bones are in right now. She is just as dead as anyone alive during the FDR. She is just as dead as Karl Marx, as John Lennon, as Gerald Ford, as Bill Clinton. Dead as Cosby, dead as the Grateful Dead, dead, dead, dead. That is how dead I think Toni Morrison is. I bet she never even saw Netscape or Microsoft Paint. She’d think a silicon chip was a type of Doritos. And if I’m wrong, I’ll never get an email; she probably died before this paragraph. That’s how dead and moldering she is right now. Please let me know in the comments what you think!