The title of this book gives you a clue that it is about black people. Indeed, it is a very interesting chronicle of a fictional black family in the Great Lakes area of the U.S. that spans the period of the 1930’s to beyond the Kennedy administration. It is apparent in reading this book why Toni Morrison, a Professor at Princeton University, is also a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The storytelling is masterful; the style is not lofty, but rather so real and compelling that the book is hard to put down. Yet, there is plenty of material in the weaving of these stories of the family members for intellectual consideration and for social comment as well. Like a professional, though, she leaves it up to the reader to do the speculation in these areas.
The main character of the book is a man named Macon Dead. "My name is Macon, and I’m already Dead." He is, in fact, Macon Dead, III. Because of the two prior family members of that same name, and the non-linear style of storytelling, it takes a little extra effort at first to be sure you’re on the right page with the author. Questions characters ask themselves or others are not always answered directly, but in a roundabout way that usually serves up pieces of a larger picture of family matters and concerns.
One has to be ready to accept the fact that these people, particularly Macon’s father and his Aunt Pilate, believe in the appearance of ghosts from time to time—specifically the ghost of Macon’s grandfather. There is even more of the spirit world that the reader encounters as the book progresses, but that I’ll leave to your discovery.
Macon has two sisters: Magdalene, called Lena; and First Corinthians Dead. His mother’s name was Ruth Foster (Dead), and she was the daughter of the only black doctor in their town. Macon’s father was practical and enterprising to a fault. He owned several rent houses in the town and local area, and his advice to his son was: "Own things. And let the things you own own other things. Then you’ll own yourself and other people too." Macon grows up working for his father and living in a fairly comfortable home filled with all kinds of misery except that caused by lack of money. Macon’s best friend, Guitar, kept him up to date on life’s misery caused by lack of money. Guitar always called Macon by his nickname, Milkman.
We get introduced to Guitar early in the book when he and Milkman, in their teens, visit Pilate, the very mysterious sister of Milkman’s father. Milkman is forbidden by his father to visit her, but the pair go anyway. Pilate is the picture of sweetness and hospitality. She is not rich like her brother, but instead makes wine that she sells to whoever wants to buy it. In her home are her only daughter, Reba, and Reba’s daughter, Hagar. The three women make the boys feel at home. Pilate offers them soft-boiled eggs, and the conversation is light and interesting as they help pull berries off their branches to make wine. During this first meeting, at his first sight of Hagar, Milkman falls in love like only a teenager can.
Milkman’s father learns about his son’s visit to Pilate, and he is furious. He says she is a snake and is not to be trusted.
Though the story is very involved, it comes out that Milkman’s father and Pilate saw their father (the original Macon) killed when they were only kids. The old man had stayed up all night sitting on a fence with a rifle in his hands, guarding his farm. Some white men had sneaked up behind him and they blew the top of his head off so they could get his farm. Macon had settled on the farm with his new wife, Sing, from Virginia years ago. Together, they had cleared the land and did all the hard manual work themselves. Macon, Jr. and Pilate were their only children. Sing had died giving birth to Pilate.
The children, Macon and Pilate, hid themselves, fearing for their lives too. They spent one night in an old cave. In the morning, when they awoke, Macon explored the back part of the cave and was frightened to discover a white man coming for him. Macon threw a rock and killed the man. Pilate gets hysterical. The man had apparently been sleeping back there all night. Macon discovers several small sacks of gold there in the cave. Pilate doesn’t want to take the gold with them, but Macon does. Somehow, Macon is forced to leave Pilate in the cave alone for most of the day while he is dodging hunters in the area. Macon never saw the gold again after he and Pilate got back together.
This story of the gold, and a later interest in it by Macon, Milkman, and Guitar, forms the core of the story that leads Milkman on a quest and on several trips of discovery to this cave and to the part of Virginia where his Grandmother Sing and her family was from.
Milkman’s discoveries on these trips, and his whole life growing up before these trips, is fascinating reading. He sees so much change in his life and is always complaining that he is not the author of these changes, but that everyone wants a piece of his life and he is unable to control things himself—unable to be his own man. He is on the verge of leaving home and his father’s business just as the gold story becomes known. His love affair with Hagar becomes a real tangle, and even his friend Guitar starts going weird on him.
In spite of Guitar’s weird ideas and activities, he gives Milkman a really profound opinion of women and how they are universal in respect to wanting a man’s whole life:
"What they mean is, Don’t love anything on earth except me. They say, ‘Be responsible,’ but what they mean is, Don’t go anywhere where I ain’t. You try to climb Mount Everest, they’ll tie up your ropes. Tell them you want to go to the bottom of the sea—just for a look—they’ll hide your oxygen tank. Or you don’t even have to go that far. Buy a horn and say you want to play. Oh, they love the music, but only after you pull eight at the post office. Even if you make it, even if you stubborn and mean and you get to the top of Mount Everest, or you do play and you good, real good—that still ain’t enough. You blow your lungs out on the horn and they want what breath you got left to hear about how you love them. They want your full attention. Take a risk and they say you not for real. That you don’t love them. They won’t even let you risk your own life, man, your own life—unless it’s over them. You can’t even die unless it’s about them. What good is a man’s life if he can’t even choose what to die for?"
As much as I came to really dislike Guitar in the course of this book, I really admired this quotation about women. It’s the whole story of man’s struggle in life.
If you’re waiting for me to fill in the blanks I’ve left in this narrative, I’m sorry. You’ll just have to buy the book and read it yourself. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it, regardless of whether you’re black or white or whatever your feelings about racial differences may be. It really acts kind of like what psychologists call a catharsis for these feelings, leaving one with a peaceful, washed-clean feeling about the whole issue.
© 1997 Herman Fontenot
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My name is Herman, and my e-mail address is: kfonteno@flash.net.
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