Tar Baby [Paperback]

Toni Morrison (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc.,US (2001)
• ASIN: B0019QFYPK
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. She is the author of several novels, including The Bluest Eye, Beloved (made into a major film), and Love. She has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize. She is the Robert F. Goheen Professor at Princeton University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The "trick" to comprehending a "trickster" novel, November 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Tar Baby (Contemporary Fiction, Plume) (Mass Market Paperback)

One of the things that's often hard in reading other readers' responses to an author that you absolutely adore (and I am an avid Morrison fan) is preparing for the types of reviews that often try to invalidate her or dismiss her because her writing demands so much from us. Yet, I believe her Nobel prize speaks for itself (even for all those who were "forced" into reading her for a class or seminar -or even because Oprah said so), so when others "trash" her, my disgust is not in their inability to appreciate her but in a recurring trend that continues to prove that our mass-media, TV-dominated culture has produced a generation of readers (and I use the term loosely) who no longer appreciate reading a book for the sheer pleasure of how the written language comes together and how an author like Morrison blends both oral culture and myths with written text.

And, folks, you really need that appreciation if you're going to get into a novel like Tar Baby. I believe some very basic knowledge needs to be in place. A) Some knowledge of the African American folktale of the tar baby and Brer Rabbit B.) Some knowledge of the biblical story of Adam and Eve and how religious doctrine has traditionally interpreted it. C.) Some understanding of the "trickster" (and this novel is filled with this figure) tradition in both American and African lore--who is tricked, who's doing the tricking and what is the overall "trick": colonialism? male-female relations? race relations?

I believe that once we recover much of the traditions that someone like Morrison has been exposed to (from the Bible to the blues to Faulkner to Zora Neale Hurston), her novels can be read with some appreciation and respect. . . and love.

I'm not one of those who believe that Morrison as a black woman author is too "marginal" to be appreciated by a "mainstream" reader, but a "true reader" is someone who can transcend their particular identities and trust a writer to take then onto any journey outside themselves and not even mind if there is a "trick" in store for them, or some profound pleasure...or horrific pain.

Reading is about trusting the author to reveal to us some new vision we did not know existed...But be prepared: Morrison is not the type of writer who will hold your hand!

Here's hoping that Amazon can inspire true love of reading and real thought and vision that comes from extensive readership! Only then, can user reviews be exciting and a pleasure to read!

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A satire with real bite, February 8, 2001

By 

Michael J. Mazza - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tar Baby (Contemporary Fiction, Plume) (Mass Market Paperback)

"Tar Baby" may not be the most celebrated of Toni Morrison's many memorable novels, but, in my opinion, it's the most fun. Much of the story takes place at the Caribbean mansion of white millionaire Valerian Street. Morrison weaves a deliciously nasty psychodrama involving Street, his flaky wife, the Street's black servants, and Jadine, a young black woman who is niece to the servants and who has been educated thanks to Valerian's money. Into this mix Morrison tosses Son, a dreadlocked black man with a dangerous edge.

"Tar Baby" is a frequently outrageous satire of racial identity, sexual politics, consumer culture, class consciousness, and family dysfunctionality. Her cast of characters is colorfully warped in an almost Dickensian manner. Particularly interesting is the portrait of Jadine, the black wunderkind beloved by her wealthy white patrons; I think of her as a whorish postmodern parody of early African-American poet Phillis Wheatley.

As always, Morrison's writing is marked by passages of poetic power and grace. Check out, for example, this marvelous description of Son's hair: "Wild, aggressive, vicious hair that needed to be put in jail. Uncivilized, reform-school hair. Mau Mau, Attica, chain gang hair."

Ultimately, I read "Tar Baby" as a comic tragedy of people trapped in a complex web of racial, sexual, and economic mythologies. Profane, thought-provoking, ironic, and rich in scathing humor, this novel is ample proof of Toni Morrison's writerly talent.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Oiy Vey!, July 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Tar Baby (Contemporary Fiction, Plume) (Mass Market Paperback)

This was the first time Morrison tried to deal with contemporary life (the second time was Paradise) and she fails, miserably. Insted of offering an intelligent critique of consumer culture, Morrison contrasts consumer culture (here identified, in all forms, as "white" and Eurocentric) against a mythical blackness, represented by the character Son and his podunk hometown, Eloe. Son escapes some ship and hides in the house of a wealthy white couple, who just happen to have paid for a young black model to go to the Sorbonne. Morrison carefully sets her stage: on one side, Jade (the model) who is as white as snow because she rejects her black heritage and is grateful that the white couple paid for her schooling; and on the other side is Son and mystical ghosts who visit him, or some nonsuch. Naturally, this being a Morrison novel, neither side wins, but the white people get a good spanking when Morrison reveals that the wife used to abuse her son and the man is more interest in classical music than his family. This couple was written about more memorably, many times over, by Edward Albee in VIRGINIA WOOLF. Is this the best critique Morrison has to offer? Against consumer culture she posits, what, ghosts? Myth? Myth is the very tool of capitalism. Again, Morrison has failed to show how real black people actually live (watching television and reading the paper, not listening to ghosts; living in multi-racial communities, not conveniently isolated all-black ones)in order to make some sort of point about the importance of not forgetting your heritage. When given the choice between two polar opposites -- mythic blackness or false whiteness -- why should either Son or Jade choose. Both strategies are complicit with the capitalist culture Morrison tries to undermine.