YSU LECTURE SERIES Author Morrison speaks about conflict, struggle

The author's newest novel comes outin October.
By JoANNE VIVIANO
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- What would have happened if the evil, monstrous Grendel, nemesis of Beowulf, had met a teacher?
The question was posed by Dr. Gary M. Salvner, English Department chairman at Youngstown State University.
It was answered by Nobel Prize laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Toni Morrison: "If the teacher was as enlightening and had the language that was as elegant as the Shaper [a poet in the tale] -- he would have been educated. I, like most teachers, have faith that all things are educable."
Morrison, a native of Lorain, spoke Thursday at Powers Auditorium as part of the Skeggs Lecture Series at YSU. The college professor won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for "Beloved" and the 1977 National Book Critics Award for "Song of Solomon." She has also authored "Sula," "Tar Baby," "Jazz" and "Paradise."
Her newest novel, "Love," is scheduled for release in October.
Lecture topics
In her lecture, Morrison paralleled the 12th-century Beowulf epic, as translated by Seamus Haney, with the contemporary "Grendel" by John Gardner, weaving the tale of the man-eating monster who eats Scandinavians with the newer version that offers the beast's view of the story.
While the epic monster is pure evil, Gardner's monster encounters both the poet "Shaper" who "organizes the world's disorder," and the cynical, gold-guarding dragon who tells the lonely monster to "go get a pile of gold and sit on it," Morrison explained.
The "conflict" between the two is an essential part of university learning, Morrison said.
"Conflict is a clash of incompatible forces -- disharmony," she said. "They must be embraced if education is going to occur. Firing up the mind to engage itself is precisely what the mind is for. It is always craving knowledge and when it is not busy trying to know, it is in disrepair. It can invent, it can imagine and, most important, it can debate."
"Language, informed, shaped and reasoned, will become the hand that stops the crisis and gives the conflict room to breathe," she continued. "I know democracy is worth fighting for. I know fascism is not," she said. "To win the former, intelligent struggle is needed. To win the latter, nothing is needed."
She said the visit to Youngstown made her nostalgic for days as a young child when "the thought of going to Youngstown from Lorain was like going to a big city, almost, but not quite, as exotic as Cleveland."
Questions, answers
During a question-and-answer session, students and others learned:
U "Paradise" was born after she read newspaper archive accounts about slaves traveling to Oklahoma for a new life; some that made the trip were turned away by former slaves just like them. "I was amazed and I was, like, 'What would that feel like and what would you do?' -- Rejected people reject people and paradise is paradise precisely because everybody can't get in."
U Her first novel, "The Bluest Eye" was written as a story in an attempt to keep herself in a club of poets and writers she met in Washington, D.C., after she graduated; the story later became a novel.
U Her novels are not autobiographical. "I have no interest in writing anything at all about my life," she said. "I can't tell you how quickly I fall asleep when I think about that."
U She's pleased that the desire of young people to become writers, which faded over the last 30 years, has seen a rebirth. "I think there are so many stories out there, so many places, virgin territory," she explained. "And it's extremely rewarding to me to see all the writers cropping up."
viviano@vindy.com