From an amazing short talk I heard today by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, about the humanities in general and her writing in particular:
- “Standing on the outside looking in was a big advantage for me as a writer.”
- “We have all spent a lot of time and thought at the boundary, the border–at the edge. It’s a place the rich have to police. Those outside study the edge and plot to break through it. Those inside fight to maintain belonging or to belong someplace else.”
- “Literature is full of writers who betrayed their class (Harriet Beecher Stowe or Mark Twain) — who ran away from it to live in exile (Henry James) — who stood at the border so they could critique it (Ernest Hemingway, Herman Melville)”
- “A ruthless gaze at the center, whether from within or without the circle–that is the strength of the humanities. It has been my way to be at home in the world.”
Many thanks to Al and Bethellen for inviting me, as their guest, to today’s ceremony to see and hear Drew Gilpin Faust awarding the 2007 Radcliffe Medal to Toni Morrison.
p.s. And my sincere apologies to Ms. Morrison that my reconstruction of notes scribbled onto my program fail to do justice to her own Nobel-quality eloquence.