Radhika Jones on Toni Morrison’s legacy as a writer and editor: “She was the light who enabled so many other voices, she was their conduit, and then she crossed over, with all her genius and confidence and grace, and she brought the light herself”
of Morrison that her editorial career was born out of circumstance; her marriage had fallen apart, and she needed a job and applied to an ad at the back of the“She had a sense of mission,” said her friend and longtime colleaguevice president and executive editor at Pantheon, who knew her for more than 40 years. “If you think about the times in which she was operating as an editor, there was a lot of ferment in the culture.
She was writing too, but she did it unseen, in the quiet. She didn’t tell anyone at Random House.
“No,” Morrison said. “I wanted to be a reader. I thought everything that needed to be written had already been written or would be. I only wrote the first book because I thought it wasn’t there, and I wanted to read it when I got through.” What’s so striking about that statement is that, as an editor, she was in a position to know. She was engaged in the active process of reading and acquiring. She knew exactly what was there, and she knew how to champion it—and had she remained an editor, she still would have made a more significant contribution to American literature than most of us ever will.
I woke up before dawn this morning and thought about Toni Morrison in the dark, about all the work that she brought into being. And what I realized is that she did not only watch for the light to come. She was the light before the light arrived. She was the light who enabled so many other voices, she was their conduit, and then she crossed over, with all her genius and confidence and grace, and she brought the light herself.
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