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"That's where my finger went down at."
"Well, your brain ain't got to follow it. You don't want to give this motherless child the name of the man that killed Jesus, do you?"
"I asked Jesus to save me my wife."
"Careful, Macon."
"I asked him all night long."
"He give you your baby."
"Yes. He did. Baby named Pilate."
What was he supposed to do with this new information his father had dumped on him? Was it an effort to cop a plea? How was he supposed to feel about the two of them now? Was it true, first of all? Did his mother... had his mother made it with her own father? Macon had said no. That the doctor was impotent. How did he know? Well, he must have known what he was talking about, because he was much too eager for it to be true to let it go if there were any possibility it could have taken place. Still, he had admitted there were "other things" a man could do to please a woman.
"Goddamn," Milkman said aloud. What the fuck did he tell me all that shit for?" He didn't want to know any of it. There was nothing he could do about it. The doctor was dead. You can't do the past over.
"Also, I want to thank you. Thank you for all you have meant to me. For making me happy all these years. I am signing this letter with love, of course, but more than that, with gratitude."
and he did sign it with love, but it was the word "gratitude" and the flat-out coldness of "thank you" that sent Hagar spinning into a bright blue place where the air was thin and it was silent all the time, and where people spoke in whispers or did not make sounds at all, and where everything was frozen except for an occasional burst of fire inside her chest that crackled away until she ran out into the streets to find Milkman Dead.
"What do you call a lecture?" asked Guitar. "When you don't talk for two seconds? When you have to listen to somebody else instead of talk? Is that a lecture?"
... "That's the problem, Milkman. You're more interested in my tone than in what I'm saying. I'm trying to say that we don't have to agree on everything; that you and me are different; that-"
"You mean you got some secret shit that you don't want me to know about."
"I mean there are things that interest me that don't interest you."
"How do you know they don't interest me?"
"I know you. Been knowing you. ..."
Once the wheels were actually turning and the engine had cleared its throat did Ruth begin, and she began in the middle of a sentence as though she had been thinking it all through since she and her son left the entrance to Fairfield Cemetery.
".... because the fact is that I am a small woman. I don't mean little; I mean small, and I'm small because I was pressed small. I lived in a great big house that pressed me into a small package. I had no friends, only schoolmates who wanted to touch my dresses and my white silk stockings. But I didn't think I'd ever need a friend because I had him. I was small, but he was big. The only person who ever really cared whether I lived or died. Lots of people were interested in whether I lived or died, but he cared. He was not a good man, Macon. Certainly he was an arrogant man, and often a foolish and destructive one. But he cared whether and he cared how I lived, and there was, and is, no one else in the world who ever did. And for that I would do anything. It was important for me to be in his presence, among his things, the things he used, had touched. Later it was just important for me to know that he was in the world. When he left it, I kept on reigniting that cared-for feeling that I got from him."
Then she tackled the problem of trying to decide how she wanted to live and what was valuable to her. When am I happy and when am I sad and what is the difference? What do I need to know to stay alive? What is true in the world? Her mind traveled crooked streets and aimless goat paths, arriving sometimes at profundity, other times at the revelations of a three year old.
"What kind of life is that?"
"Very satisfying."
"There's no love in it."
"No love? No love? Didn't you hear me? What I'm doing ain't about hating white people. It's about loving us. About loving you. My whole life is love."
Truly landlocked people know they are. Know the occasional Bitter Creek or Powder River that runs through Wyoming: that the large tidy Salt Lake of Utah is all they have of the sea and that they must content themselves with bank, shore, and beach because they cannot claim a coast. And having none, seldom dream of flight. But the people living in the Great Lakes region are confused by their place on the country's edge--an edge that is border but not coast. They seem to be able to live a long time believing, as coastal people do, that they are at the frontier where final exit and total escape are the only journeys left. But those five Great Lakes which the St. Lawrence feeds with memories of the sea are themselves landlocked, in spite of the wandering river that connects them to the Atlantic. Once the people of the lake region discover this, the longing to leave becomes acute, and a break from the area, therefore, is necessarily dream-bitten, but necessary nonetheless. It might be an appetite for other streets, other slants of light. Or a yearning to be surrounded by strangers. It may even be a wish to hear the solid click of a door closing behind their backs.
The peacock jumped onto the hood of the Buick and once more spread its tail, sending the flashy Buick into oblivion.
"Faggot." Guitar laughed softly. "White faggot."
"Are you taking me home?" (Corinthians) succeeded in keeping the anxiety out of her voice -- succeeded too well, for her words sounded arrogant and careless.
(Porter) nodded and said, "I don't want a doll baby. I want a woman. A grown-up woman that's not scared of her daddy. I guess you don't want to be a grown-up woman, Corrie."
She stared through the windshield. A grown-up woman? She tried to think of some. Her mother? Lena? The dean of women at Bryn Mawr? Michael-Mary? The ladies who visited her mother and ate cake? Somehow none of them fit. She didn't know any grown-up women. Every woman she knew was a doll baby. Did he mean like the women who rode on the bus? The other maids, who were not hiding what they were? Or the black women who walked the streets at night?
"Hadn't you better fix your hair?" Porter asked. He thought she was beautiful like that, but he didn't want her excuse to her parents, if they were still awake, to sound ridiculous.
She shook her head. She wouldn't have collected her hair into a ball at her nape now for anything in the world.
Apparently he thought he deserved only to be loved - from a distance, though - and given what he wanted. And in return he would be ... what? Pleasant? Generous? Maybe all he was really saying was: I am not responsible for your pain; share your happiness with me but not your unhappiness.
And why did the ghost tell Pilate to sing? Milkman chucked to himself. That wasn't what he was telling her at all; maybe the ghost was just repeating his wife's name, Sing, and Pilate didn't know it because she never knew her mother's name. After she died Macon Dead wouldn't let anybody say it aloud. That was funny. He wouldn't speak it after she died, and after he died that's all he ever said - her name.
Jesus!
"Pilate?"
She sighed. "Watch Reba for me." And then, "I wish I'd a knowed more people. I would of loved 'em all. If I'd knowed more, I would a loved more."

cool_new_jacket's review against another edition

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challenging dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

probably the best book I've read this year so far, loved the name motif

lucyborner's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

what the actual hell was this

lindseyas's review against another edition

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adventurous dark inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

Such a gorgeous saga of finding family and finding yourself. Milkman's dilemma is guided not only by the ire of his father, who sets his son out to get what he believes was taken from him, but also guided by a desire to understand where his father, and by extension himself, came from. The travels of Milkman allow him to discover his family background in a way that breaks down how he views his immediate and extended family, particularly his father and aunt. Love, loss and leaving are central to this history, giving Milkman a more open, even empathetic point of view on his treatment and personal life. Morrison is a master of writing on family and self, and accomplishes something so formidable and nearly fantastical but also so normal in this novel.

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