Toni Morrison & Fran Lebowitz | LIVE from the NYPL

www.nypl.org/live
Tony Morrison in Conversation with Fran Lebowitz, LIVE from the NYPL, November 12, 2008.
In conversation with Fran Lebowitz, Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison explores how the broad strokes of history impact upon the personal choices of individuals who are caught in history's reach. In her works, Morrison uses fantasy, a sinuous poetic style, and a rich interweaving of the mythic in an attempt to reveal the black American experience. She tells the stories of her characters thorugh their struggle to establish a cultural identity in an unjust society. "A Mercy," Morrison's ninth novel, uncovers what lies beneath the surface of slavery, in an ambivalent, disturbing story. Like her novel "Beloved," the story takes place in the American past. Set in the 17th-century Northeast when the slave trade was in its infancy, her characters provide a detailed look at the social environment of religious persecution, racial hatred, and the class distinction that allowed the institution of slavery to flourish in the US.
Filming: One Dream Sound
Editing: The A/V Gang

[@JoanneLight]

RIP, the great Toni Morrison. I love these two together too,

[@moanman1776]

Oh, Goddess! The language! The LANGUAGE! Long Live The Language! Sleep well, Ms. Morrison.

[@everberry51]

I really wish I’d known about this in 2008! I didn’t find Morrison until 2009 💔

[@AwesomesMan]

How is this only 3 minutes long..

[@musie25]

Can you please correct the spelling of her name?

[@Solutions3000]

Where's her name misspelled? Do you mean her whole name, Chloe Ardelia Wofford Morrison?

[@SuperEmmitt1]

These dudes...

[@lulolancy]

Toni's like Oprah, she never knew when to stop stuffing her face.

[@lulolancy]

@@AnaisWolf Go read what one of her friend, Fran Lebowitz, said in the, Paris review, about Toni. "This is another thing most people don’t know about Toni: though she was incredibly hardworking, she was physically incredibly lazy. The first time we went to dinner and a movie together-this was shortly after we met-we got out of the movie, and she said, “Let’s get a cab.” I said, “Toni, the restaurant’s five blocks away.” But we took a cab. And she loved, more than anything, dessert. As soon as we sat down, she would choose dessert, probably the most unhealthy thing you could eat on the menu. And you would know that all during dinner she was thinking about it. She would eat only three bites of her dinner, and then she would look at you. If she was a child, you would have said, “No!” But I would just say, “Fine, do what you will.” Toni didn’t really like New York. She was not an urban person. She would say, “Let’s go downtown,” about a certain place that was actually up. She couldn’t remember restaurants, she would just say, “Is this the restaurant that has the peach pie?” That was one of her main interests in life, dessert. When Toni’s mother was alive-so this was a long time ago-we had this bet going. Toni was always talking about her mother’s apple pie. And my mother was the Albert Einstein of apricot strudel. Toni and I had a bet on which was better. I pointed out that my mother also made apple pie, while her mother had never even heard of apricot strudel. I think I won that way. Once I said to Toni, “The amount of sugar you eat!” And she said, “You know, sometimes even sugar isn’t sweet enough.”

[@lulolancy]

@@AnaisWolf And by the way--I am a great person. I'm greater than Jesus Christ.

[@valve6642]

@@lulolancy yeah she was real over eater and Fran smokes like a chimney....Vices....we all have them.

[@Marie0575]

We all have those dont we?

[@phyllispetras3369]

@@Marie0575 them thar