What did everyone think? I will say up front that I loved this book the first time around, but even more this time. I also particularly liked this from the Hungerford lecture:

Pecola came into the world, essentially, through her mother and the society that surrounded her, stocked with the story of white aesthetics, the story that told her that she and her family were ugly and irredeemable. The quality of Morrison's fiction could not be more different from the quality of Barth's fiction, and I want to suggest to you that that's because in Morrison's fiction--this is her first novel begun in the early '60s, published in 1970--in this novel, she is absorbing something from that '60s culture, reflecting on it, that Barth kept very much at arm's length. So, the abstract question of what kinds of narratives produce the identity of a person becomes for Morrison a political question.

"Begun as a bleak narrative of psychological murder..."

It was really hard for me to read this book, having read the forward. Knowing that one of the goals of the author was to take a child and destroy her made it difficult for me. I understand why this is an interesting undertaking, and even a worthy one, but it was *hard* to read. I think if I had skipped the forward, I would have been more drawn in by the book, not bracing myself for these things.

Also... Breedlove? Breed love? Really? Reaaaaally? The first time I came across Pecola's last name I was literally cringing.

I didn't manage to watch the Hungerford lectures yet - that's on the agenda for today, and then I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say. I realize I've mostly sounded negative so far - I don't mean to. There was a lot to like in this book. I really enjoyed all the different voices and the vividness of the language and setting. I love books with children narrators that get 'em right, and the fierce children in this book seemed real to me. My reaction is pretty complicated, though. I can't say I liked the book, or that I disliked it. And that seems to me a mostly good thing. It's certainly got me thinking.

What do you think the use of the name Breedlove is getting at? That Pecola was merely "bred" like an animal? That "love" in the book is just sex that begets offspring? (Some text support for that: Cholly's rape of Pecola is preceded by exactly the same feelings of tenderness about her itchy leg that preceded his wooing of her mother.)

I agree that the foreword made the book harder to read. I personally think it should be an afterward.

One odd thing about this book is that what happened to Pecola didn't resonate, in some ways, as much as what happened to Lolita or even to Oedipa Maas in Crying of Lot 49. She was as estranged from the reader as from her family and community. I wonder how much Morison meant that to happen.

I will add something I truly loved about this book and kept highlighting -- the obsession with beauty and ugliness as to everything. And how misleading it was. Think of that poor dog -- a sweet and loving animal with the misfortune of having rheumy eyes and living near Soaphead Church. (I also happened to catch the first episode and a half of the BBC production of Jane Eyre last night and was struck again by the dichotomy between the plainness/ugliness of lovable Jane -- or for that matter Rochester -- and the beauty of most of the awful people in that book.)