Friday, February 1, 2019

Book Review: The Origin of Others by Toni Morrison

This book was both shorter than I expected and even better than I expected. I came for Morrison writing about Flannery O'Connor and for the insights into HOW a writer writes and a thinker thinks, and I was not disappointed. I found that Morrison's thoughts on "othering" coincide eerily with Girard's thoughts on scapegoating (and O'Connor's as well). I'm always delighted to find examples of literary convergence like this. One final note is that Morrison talks about her own works in a way that does not assume the audience's familiarity, so you can use this as an entry to her writing if you like. All these great writers are essentially saying the same thing.

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