9 - A Mercy (2008); Home (2012); God Help the Child (2015)

Summary

The Critical History of A Mercy, Home, and God Help the Child as [Not] Told by Toni Morrison

If the forewords/afterword to all the Penguin editions of her novels except A Mercy, Home, and God Help the Child represent Morrison’s elusive rendition of an autobiography, they also function as the author’s subtle attempt to control her literary critical reception history, compelling readers in a way that no scholarly introduction could ever do. The question becomes, then, why is there no Morrison telling on A Mercy, Home, and God Help the Child?

This issue becomes particularly intriguing given that an assistant editor for UK Vintage, Frances Roe, returned British scholar Tessa Roynon’s queries about the prefaces with a reply as enigmatic yet enlightening as Morrison’s typically calculated revelations:

It appears Toni Morrison took it upon herself to write the forewords and requested that Vintage US publish them in new editions to her paperbacks. However, the precise background to this will need to be checked with Vintage US or Toni’s agent. It appears that they were described as the closest we’re ever likely to have to an autobiography from Toni Morrison. (“Lobbying the Reader” 87)

Roynon’s subsequent inquiries to Morrison’s fiction editor at Vintage USA remain unanswered. The critic concludes that if “Morrison’s forewords constitute her attempt to influence (or even dictate) the reception of her work, she is unable to control the reception of the forewords themselves,” response having been mixed especially toward what a number of readers perceive to be their unfortunate didacticism and the unusual haste with which they appear to have been designed and written (87).

Authors known for writing prefatory essays to their own work, such as Dryden, Dr. Johnson, and Wordsworth and, more recently, Walt Whitman, Henry James, and Ralph Ellison, might be construed as displaying an implicit self-assurance in the ongoing importance of that work or, equally often, an anxious desire to achieve an impossible influence over the public reception of a text. These motivations exist simultaneously, Roynon believes, in the Morrisonian prefaces: “a wish to consolidate her position and the significance of her works; a continuing perception of a political urgency that necessitates her project and its clarification; and a desire to ensure that readers appreciate the scope of her artistry and her vision to the full” (“Lobbying the Reader” 88).