It’s pretty apparent why this novel is considered a masterpiece, the three stars only reflect my personal enjoyment of the text which was, frankly, limited – I wasn’t really invested in the characters, but again, that’s more a matter of personal taste. The eponymous “Solomon” in the text is the great-grandfather of the protagonist who escaped back to Africa because he couldn’t bear the condition of enslavement, leaving behind his 21 children and his wife; the biblical Solomon was the wise king of Israel who, when having to decide which of two women was the true mother of a child, announced that the child would be cut in half as a compromise – when one woman promptly renounced her claim to safe the child, he pronounced her the mother. So Morrison’s Solomon saves himself instead of being torn apart by a society that perceives him as a lesser human, but all of his descendants will suffer from the traumatic effects of slavery and Jim Crow: His illiterate son dies from a seizure while trying to protect his land, his grandson acquires wealth but sacrifices his compassion and spirit in order to survive during the era of segregation, and his great-grandson ventures on a journey for deliverance – and this journey is at the center of the novel.

Milkman, the great-grandson of Solomon, leaves Michigan in search of the gold his father and aunt Pilate once left behind in a cage in Pennsylvania. At the beginning, he displays an attitude similar to his father, a heightened individualism that strives for personal gain and uses others. Milkman has no deep emotional connection to his family and friends, and no spiritual connection to nature and the land like his great-grandfather and grandfather. But, a typical motive in American novels, the outer movement reflects an inner movement, and it’s important to realize that Milkman does not travel westward as the American myth usually has it, but ultimately southward, to Virginia, reversing the migration pattern of his family. So in a way, he also travels back in time, because (as his aunt Pilate puts it): ”Life is life. Precious. And the dead you kill is yours. They stay with you anyway, in your mind. So it’s a better thing, a more better thing to have the bones right there with you wherever you go. That way it frees up your mind.”

Which brings us to the varied female figures in the text who represent what it can mean to be a black woman in this world. Milkman’s sisters are trapped in traditional, restrictive roles; his aunt Pilate, who was born without a navel, defends her values and aspirations against a hostile and environment; and his cousin and lover Hagar fights an uphill battle she can’t win by sticking to the misogynist logic surrounding her. Just like in the case of the men, Morrison incorporates different worldviews and behavioral patterns when facing adversity, thus showing the broadness of the black experience. (The relationship between and unification of men and women is also the topic of “The Song of Solomon” (also: “Song of Songs”) in the Hebrew Bible.)

All of this is only scratching the surface of what’s going on in this novel – it is incredibly dense and requires an attentive, patient reader. There is no doubt about the literary merit of Morrison’s achievement, but I had a hard time feeling with the characters while being busy figuring out the numerous hints and clues in this packed narrative. Still: There are many authors who have gotten the Nobel and it makes you wonder why they were chosen – not in the case of Morrison. She is simply an amazing, highly gifted writer.

A ver, señoras y señores, esta novela fue galardonada con el National Critics Awards en 1978 y en ella se dicen cosas como estas:

n  “Había estado dispuesto a golpear a una anciana negra que le había ofrecido el primer huevo cocido perfecto que había comido en su vida, que le había mostrado el firmamento, azul como las cintas del sombrero de su madre, de modo que desde aquel día cada vez que miraba al cielo no sentía la distancia, la lejanía, sino que lo reconocía como algo íntimo, familiar, como el cuarto en que vivía, un lugar en que encajaba, al que correspondía. Le había contado cuentos, le había cantado canciones, le había alimentado de plátanos y bizcochos de maíz, y, cuando llegaba el frío, con sopa de nueces bien calentita. Y si su madre no mentía, esta anciana —cercana ya a los setenta, pero con la piel y la agilidad de una adolescente— le había traído al mundo cuando sólo un milagro podía conseguirlo. Fue aquella misma mujer, aquella a quien él hubiera golpeado hasta dejarla inconsciente, la que irrumpió en la comisaría y actuó ante los policías ofreciéndose indefensa a sus risas, a su piedad, a sus burlas, a su desprecio, a su incredulidad, a su odio, a su capricho, a su disgusto, a su poder, a su ira, a su aburrimiento… a todo lo que pudiera ser de utilidad para salvarle a él.” n

¿Qué más necesitan para leerlo?

In a criminal amount of oversimplification I will simply say that Song of Solomon is a perfect novel that has reached a higher level of perfection in my mind during this reread. I'm not sure how many more years of reading I have left, but I'm sure it will take a long time for me to read any work of literature that is better than this.

I'll post some specfic 2019 thoughts soon, but in the mean time, my thoughts from my initial read in February of 2018 is below.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BfbigrlFv...

Song of Solomon is the most brilliant novel ever written. It is a miracle of voice and style, as is typical of Toni Morrison's prolific œuvre of literary works, but also, it is epic and lyrical and thrilling to read in a way her other novels do not come close to. Written chronologically, from the perspective of one character, Macon "Milkman" Dead, SoS is, on the surface, a perfect bildungsroman; our hero grows up and encounters difficulties that ultimately leave him at a crux where he must go on a quest to empower, embolden, and strengthen his resolve, maturing him into manhood and true understanding of who he is in the world.

In Milkman's world, however, things aren't so simple and predicable. Part 1 is a brilliant but straightforward telling of our main character's life up to a certain point. But by Part 2, it becomes clear that the novel is more deeply concerned with history, about roots, about inheritance, reclamation of names, and the transcendence of earthly wealth for the wealth of truly knowing one's self. There is much concern with the idea of flight: Milkman is a man stuck and yearning for escape from the emptiness and stagnancy of his current reality but is continually mired in both ignorance and indifference to everything and everyone around him. When he finally wakes up and decides to be a man, he goes on a literal quest to find gold, but winds up tracking his forefathers, gaining clarity about who he is and ultimately finding the key to true flight.

It is the last third of the novel that gives me chills every time I read it. Morrison offers no explanations for her nebulous symbolism throughout the novel, but it is in this last section that the symbols and themes begin to offer a clear way into the story...there are ghosts and waking dreams and evocations of oral epic storytelling that culminate in what I think is the greatest final moment in all of literature.

The heart of this novel is the incredibly fascinating group of women: Pilate, Reba, Hagar, Ruth, First Corinthians, Magdalene called Lena, Circe, Sweet, and Sing. Special mention to the Solomon of the title, who's song and history, in the context of the novel, is impactful and emotionally affecting in a way that is indescribable. He represents, for me, the lost great (x10) grandfather of all of us black people, cut off from history because of slavery and this country's love of historical and cultural erasure. He is that lost ancestor who's song was the only possession he had to hand down, who song is the only way we have to tell our own stories....

Süleyman’ın Şarkısı (“Song of Solomon”), 1977, Toni Morrison.

Yazarın üçüncü, benim okuduğum altıncı romanı Süleyman’ın Şarkısı. Morrison’ın dilinin hatlarının en belirgin çizildiği romanlardan biri. Sevilen gibi ‘büyük’ bir roman. Gizemli, bilmeceli, büyüleyici.

Diğer romanlarından farklı olarak bu sefer erkek bir kahraman yaratmış Toni Morrison. Milkman Dead. Ne Sethe ne de Pecola kadar güçlü bir karakter Milkman Dead. Zayıf, bencil, öz farkındalığı olmayan, kendi ırkının problemlerine, 14 yaşında öldürülen Emmett Till’e duyarsız kalan bir karakter. Orta-üst sınıftan bir aileye sahip, hayatı boyunca maddi sorunlar çekmemiş bir siyahi. Hayatı öğrenememiş, sadece çapkınlıkla geçmiş bir hayat fakat sonunda Milkman canlanıyor ve uyanıyor. Hayatında bir amaç edinmesi gerektiği gerçeği yüzüne bir şekilde çarpıyor. İşte bı noktada, roman salt bir anlatı olmaktan çıkıp kimlik, arayış ve köklere dönüş hikayesine dönüyor. Geçmişin izlerini sürüyor Milkman, Güney’e, bilmecelerin çözüldüğü noktaya gidiyor.

İsimler ne anlam ifade eder? İsim kişiyi yansıtır mı yoksa koyulan lakaplar mı insanı tanımlayan? Aile tarafından anlık konulmuş kelimeler mi yoksa ortak bir tarihin, kolektif bir bilincin sayesinde, kişinin yaptığı, ettiği, sebep olduğu olaylardan arta kalan, üstüne yapışan mıdır?

Milkman, Guitar, Macon Dead, Macon Dead II, Pilate, Sing, Shalimar— Solomon.

Karakterlerin tümü müthiş detaylarla bezenmiş, sanki yazılmamış, çizilmiş gibi.
Morrison’ın dili duyularla iç içe. Kokular, tatlar... beş duyu da kullanılıyor onun kalemini okurken. Morrison, romanlarını tekrar tekrar okumak istediğim bir yazar. Süleyman’ın Şarkısı da o kitaplardan biri oldu. Bu kitabı anlatmak çok zor, o yüzden okuyun, belki okuduktan sonra anlatmak istediklerim yerine ulaşmış olur.

Toni Morrison is just an excellent author independently of the fact that her books also work incredibly well for me as a reader — I’m heading to google some things, brb

Such an interesting departure from Sula and The Bluest Eye. I'm going to struggle to describe what I thought of this book without over intellectualizing my own experience. I'm sure this is the sort of book I would need to read multiple times to really parse out what Morrison is doing with it.

Some random thoughts about what I did like: The characters were gripping, and I think Milkman was particularly sympathetic at the center of the novel. His experience weathering verbal abuse from classmates, a fraught relationship with his father, and his own struggle to understand his identity made it easy to sympathize with him. You can feel his desperation to uncover his family's origin and how he bumps up against the constraints of his family's past enslavement (as well as unreliable narrators within his own family). As the reader you're also positioned with more knowledge than Milkman has, both about his family's past and about the origin of their last name Dead.

I always appreciate how Toni Morrison is so deliberate about her inclusion of plot, themes, and characters. Characters from the beginning of the book appear again later, the idea of flight is consistently woven throughout the narrative and is both the beginning and ending imagery bookending this book. Parts of Milkman's journey to find the gold his family left behind feels Odyssean.

I also think Milkman's best friend, Guitar, was a fascinating character. So much of his journey within this book involves him seeking vengeance or revenge over white people, and given how recently removed this community is from slavery, he can feel at times like a triumphant vigilante you want to root for, even as he enacts his eye-for-an-eye style of justice.

Truly could talk for days about the nuances of this book and what's going on with it — suffice it to say, this one especially feels like a book I'll have to re-read again.

The fathers may soar
And the children may know their names

When I learned that school would be forcing me to read Song of Solomon I whined and groaned and cursed the name of Toni Morrison to the high heavens. I had already entered the strange and mysteriously poetic world of Toni Morrison to no avail, and I didn't believe that this book would be any better. However, I was WRONG, and now that I have finished the novel I find myself forced to bite my tongue and retract all previous negative statements.

In Song of Solomon , Morrison weaves a tale of magical realism in which all characters are connected. It is a book in which every move is premeditated and everything happens for a reason. It is a book so jammed with symbolism that the birds on the wire have meaning, and the song that children sing on playgrounds have meaning, and the day a person dies on has meaning. As I read my mind was continually blown out of the water. The revelations, and slow build-ups and heart stopping moments of action where all too much for me. Love and hate were all so closely connected that often the lines blurred and a characters motives could change on the turn of a heel.

I can't exactly do a plot summary of this book because such a book cannot be summarized. Spark Notes has tried and failed. Friends have tried and failed. I doubt even Morrison herself could summarize such a twisted plot line. You simply have to read it for yourself and let the story of Milkman, Pilot, Macon Dead, and Macon Dead the Grandfather, and Circe and Reba, and Hagar and Guitar and so many others unfold.

"O Sugarman don't leave me here
Cotton balls to choke me
O Sugarman don't leave me here
Buckra's arms to yoke me. . . .

Sugarman done fly away
Sugarman done gone
Sugarman cut across the sky
Sugarman gone home."

The Committee who gave this author the Nobel were not native readers, or had not finished many of her books, which in my reading start strong, and fade, often under a hundred pages in. Before that, fine dialog and observation:
"Funny kind of luck ain't no luck at all..."
"HE comes just once a year..."
Hagar and Pilate pulled the conversation apart, each yanking out some thread of conversation more to herself than Milkman or Guitar--or even Reba.."(47) Fine on Black names, late in the book: "Names they got from yearnings, gestures, flaws, events, mistakes, weaknesses. Names that bore witness. (Second) Corinthians, Railroad Tommy, Empire State, Small Boy, Sweet, Circe, Nero, Muddy Waters, Pinetop, Bo-Diddley, T-Bone, Staggerlee..."

Or around a hundred pages,
"It was their way of explaning what they believed was white madness-- crimes planned and executed in a truly lunatic manner against total strangers"(100) Guitar confesses to "balancing" crazy White killings of Blacks as part of avengers, the Days of the Week (he's the Sunday-killer). Milkman says it's not justice, but Guitar correctly retorts there's no court will even let Blacks testify--at least, in Hurston's great, savagely ironic court scene in "Their Eyes Were Watching God"(1937). Fifty years later, TM, "There are places right now where a Negro still can't testify against a white man. Where the judge, the jury, the court are legally bound to ignore anything a Negro has to say"(160). Hurston's court scene holds Austenian irony, elegant and satiric. Yes, Hurston's a greater novelist than Morrison, arguably equal to a Bellow; but, this is the best TM I've read.

Morrison's novels begin very well, ironically, but devolve into long, slapdash non-paragraphs (though this novel better than others in this regard):
"The woman who slept in the same house with him, and who could call him and he would
come, who knew the mystery of his flesh, who had memory of him as long as his life. The woman
who knew him, had watched his teeth appear, had stuck her finger into his mouth to soothe his
gums. Cleaned his behind, Vaselined his penis, had caught his vomit in a fresh white diaper. Had
fed him from her own nipples..."(137)
You get the idea. We get the idea. Other novels are even worse in divigation, random wordiness.
Can't explain it. Maybe Morrison just wrote too much. Austen wrote about five novels, all compact except Mansfield Park. Morrison, ten plus seven non-fiction and other works (children's books included). Of her novels, "Song of Solomon('s General Store)" tops my list. Revelatory. As the author of BirdTalk, I learned about dogtalk, "the low liquid 'howm howm,' the reedy whistles, the thin 'eeeees' of the cornet, the 'unh unh unh' bass chords. It was all a language"(279).
The rural beginnings, and the gold Milkman searches for, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where I hiked with two real hikers, college friends, ten days during spring break in 1964. Had hitch-hiked from MA to VA, except for a bus out of NYC to Trenton. A story there, some another time, though much gratitude, including a man in D.C. who saw us standing in front of the White House fence, and took us to lunch.

Acquired a first-edition hardcover with its dust jacket in great shape a few months ago for $1 at the Philadelphia public library branch next to where Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. Read it now after the author died. I read The Bluest Eye and Beloved in my first college-level English Lit class. Don't remember much of The Bluest Eye but Beloved electrified me, maybe the first great contemporary novel I'd read at the time, and then I bought Jazz when it came out but was disappointed and only read a few chapters. I taught Beloved a dozen years ago in a college-level Intro to English Lit class and have read it three or four times. But for some reason I've never read this one, or Sula or Tar Baby, which I'll read soon enough. Anyway, I was surprised how jokey this was, same way Invisible Man surprised me with its if not madcap then exaggerated vibe, a precursor for the sort of fiction that James Wood would eventually deem hysterical, that is, hyperbolic, with every action and description modified to the nth. In this, there's some light magical realism too -- published in '77, seven years after One Hundred Years of Solitude came out in English, it reminded me of Marquez in that both Morrison and Marquez adopt and adapt to a degree narrative technologies previously developed in Mississippi to relay the volitionless servants of fatality and mythopoetic obversity occurring in a certain Yoknapatawpha County. In this the language doesn't very often feel Faulknerian -- more so, it's the multigenerational thing with characters sharing names, some light incest, and a sense of the burden of generational inheritance. For the Compsons, it's the weight of slavery and "vanquished" state of the family in particular and the South in general. In this case, the gold that Milkman (Macon Dead III) searches for as the story sort of devolves almost into an adventure is really the family's history, his patrimony, appreciation of which leads to an ecstatic baptism rebirth after which he learns to surrender to the air and even if just for a moment transcend, overcome, rise up. Generally, so many of the characters are extraordinarily well-characterized, especially the navel-less Pilate Dead, with their characters all benefiting from memorable names like Magdalene called Lena. The dialogue for the most part shines throughout -- it takes off and brings the characters to life -- although I felt like the exposition went on too long and often overexplained. The dialogue sometimes between Guitar and Milkman also overexplained, carried the weight of clarifying the narrative. Loved the conflict between friends about the Seven Days (its news in the novel sadly remains news now) but also felt like it was under-used in the story, or at least the radicalized Guitar's turn against his "main man" seemed short-shrifted although I appreciated it as social commentary (black male friendship complicated/corrupted at first by how they decide to respond to racism and then their greed when faced with the possibility of winning freedom in the form of a sack of loot). Generally, I felt like the last 100 pages or so were essentially plot triage, often with long passages of exposition clarifying what was going on from Milkman's perspective. It's essentially a conventional coming-of-age story, structurally confounded to a degree, with semi-fantastic flourishes, charged by the heft of long history of white racism and violence, but also it wonderfully demonstrates the forces pulling on someone like Milkman, trying for the most part to simply get laid when everyone around, women, men, fathers, friends, want something from him. The opening and the end having to do with flight -- its imaginative possibility in conflict with its realistic impossibility -- amount to the novel's thematic wings. And for me this soared at times but sometimes came to earth when it seemed overburdened by exposition. Glad I read it, generally enjoyed it, felt it, will always remember images, but ultimately have come away with conflicted feelings, mainly on a formal level. Will try to read Sula and maybe The Bluest Eye again pretty soon.

Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon is an interesting read in magical realism. Through its protagonist, Macon Dead III aka Milkman, and three generations of the Dead family (I know that's a strange name to have), the reader is introduced to the life of African-Americans and how centuries of racism, oppression and subjugation has affected the psyche of these people.

Milkman is on a quest to find hidden gold when he accidentally stumbles upon his family's past. It not only helps him understand his people, but his own self and where he came from which is fairly redemptive. It is through him and the people he meets on this journey that the reader is introduced to the key motivations, aspirations, yearnings and disappointments of these people. Whether it be Milkman’s friend, Guitar, who is bent on avenging the horrors committed on the black community, or Circe the slave midwife who hates her white employers so much as to let their house crumble after their death. Whether it is Ruth, who after being continually ignored by her husband finds solace on the grave of her dead father, or Pilate whose restful spirit stands in stark contrast to every other person in the novel. Whether it is Hagar who would much rather die than live a life without her man, or Milkman's father Macon Dead II who values property and gold above all else.

Morrison writes with panache and her writing has many many many layers. For me, being an Indian and all that, it is difficult to understand everything, but I did the best I could. For instance there is something about the names in this novel. Morrison does mention how whites in the US used to give strange names to blacks. So, there is Guitar, Corinthians, Magdalene called Lena, Circe, Hagar, Pilate, Railroad Tommy, Hospital Tommy and many others. The society that Morrison describes is strikingly patriarchal and nothing of what it is today, or that's what I imagine. An interesting read overall. This is the first of her novels that I read and I can't say I understood everything, but then I do wish to come back to it again. Till then, I give it a four star and recommend it to all my friends who like reading in this particular genre.

For over a month now, I've been stuck in this novel and couldn't even finish it. The story couldn't grab me. Maybe I 'll try to reread it later

Have you ever considered the historical heritage and the intrinsic meaning of your name and surname? What is a proper noun if not a word that carries concentrated quintessence to depict oneself? Aren’t people named after parents or grandparents paying homage to their own ancestry somehow?
There is something miraculous about the past that the future lacks. All nations, maybe even the whole mankind, have managed to transform thousands and millions of particular fictions created by individual beings into a unique and collective memory, into a shared history, into a coherent past. Contrarily, the future can’t be designed collectively. Its individual fictions are elusive, unfinished, bled dry because like all visions of heaven and hell, they are ethereal.

Milkman believes people’s names reflect their own yearnings, failures, wishes, weaknesses and even their worst fears. Names bear witness, names are condensed DNA. But what happens if one’s name is the byproduct of mere randomness or the result of some humiliating mishap like a “white drunkard” mistyping what he hears? Milkman’s “official” name is Macom Dead. Named after his father and grandfather, Macom the third knows he can’t have a future because his surname is Dead. His nickname “Milkman” mirrors disturbing connotations about his mother Ruth and the effects sustained sexual deprivation and marital abuse have on her waning psyche, perverting the significance of Macon’s nickname and leaving the young man even more restless about his true origins.
"It’s a wonder anybody knows who anybody is.” A whole generation of people with empty names: Empire States, Railroads Hospital, Guitar Bains, Macom Dead. A dark joke played on a hapless community by a wounded past suppurating with centuries of slavery and steadfast barbarity where everybody is on a quest to give meaning to their hollow identities.
Some, like Milkman’s father, the regal Macom Dead the second, think they can recover their robbed pride with riches and status. Others, like Guitar Bains, Milkman’s best friend, are moved by a bloodthirsty and insane vengeance to rebalance justice in a universe ruled with radical fanaticism. They are all groping in the dark, lost in the thick mist of fear and shame, in a world where the living and the dead coexist in the mystical tradition of Afro-American songs.
Only those who are not afraid of ghosts, only those who intone healing melodies to suture the scarred past, only those who welcome anonymity with arms wide open possess the clairvoyance to reach beyond the mist and are blessed with the redeeming light of truth.
Pilate, Milkman’s aunt and his father’s sister, is a natural shaman who searches no more. Equally shunned yet respected by all, she accepts the encumbrance of existence and pays her respects to her ancestors in taking life as the precious treasure it is, forcing Milkman to ponder about his aimless one.
Estranged from his own family and impelled by self-pity, Milkman embarks on a journey to the past that leads him to Southern Virginia following the traces of his great-grandfather.
Who is Solomon? Why does Milkman have an urge to fly since he was a kid? Why is he rooted in a past that prevents him from thinking of a future? What is he really afraid of? A chain of prodigious events involving supernatural experiences in a cave full of bones and gold, the communion of a man’s lost soul with Mother Earth and disturbing dreams about disembodied female spirits points selfless love as the hidden path to Milkman’s true identity.

With the menacing subplot of a declared racial war pulsating in her arrhythmic phrasing, Morrison creates a joined voice for the oppressed minorities of the Afro-American community that sings with the inherent melody of myths and legends incrusted in their popular tradition. Below Morrison’s unmistakable sumptuous prose, vibrant imagery and the allegoric dimension of her magic realism there is a painful exploration of recurrent themes such as the weight of past, the burden of present and the shifting power between genders in the Southern America of the sixties.
Sinking his fingers deep into the mossy soil, cradled by the roots of a Sweetgum Tree and inhaling the movement of the whispering leaves, Milkman listens to the soft tune of a faraway song. “Solomon done fly, Solomon done gone, Solomon cut across the sky, Solomon gone home!” Blinded by the absence of fear and tired of dodging death, Milkman submits to the Song of Solomon and opens his wings to soar the skies with a lightness of being and a confident heart beating with faith for a bright future that will redeem a silenced past.