This is a NPR interview with Toni Morrison from 2011. She discusses her take on ghosts, as well as how her own experiences influenced her novels. Her take on spirits is definitely unique. She says, "I think of ghosts and haunting as just being alert. If you are really alert, you see the life that exists beyond the life on top." She also discusses how she never recognized how her own experiences had influenced her work. She actually says she's "loathes" people who ask if her characters represent her or her life. In fact, she had actually seen a ghost walking out of the Hudson River (5:30 on the interview). Ring a bell?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3912464
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2 comments:
I dont understand how she could get upset when being asked that. I have found that in every creative story that I have written, characters are bits and pieces i know. (I am not saying I am a writer like Toni Morrison by any means.) In our Dante inferno papers for example, I only could talk about things I had experienced or friends that I was poking fun at. I think it is a harmless question because I believe that all characters people make up are based off of some characteristics of people the writer knows. It doesn't have to mean that an entire character is based off of one person and that person only.
That was a really interesting interview, thanks for posting it. Morrison has a really soothing voice, I kind of want to listen to her read the whole thing. I don't, however, get how she could not realize that she was influenced by her own life, especially that whole Hudson River thing.
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