Playing in the Dark

By Toni Morrison

An immensely persuasive work of literary criticism that opens a new chapter in the American dialogue on race—and promises to change the way we read American literature—from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner

Morrison shows how much the themes of freedom and individualism, manhood and innocence, depended on the existence of a black population that was manifestly unfree--and that came to serve white authors as embodiments of their own fears and desires. According to the Chicago Tribune, Morrison "reimagines and remaps the possibility of America." Her brilliant discussions of the "Africanist" presence in the fiction of Poe, Melville, Cather, and Hemingway leads to a dramatic reappraisal of the essential characteristics of our literary tradition. 

Written with the artistic vision that has earned the Nobel Prize-winning author a pre-eminent place in modern letters, Playing in the Dark is an invaluable read for avid Morrison admirers as well as students, critics, and scholars of American literature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jul 24, 2007
• ISBN: 9780307388636

Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) was a Nobel Prize–winning American author, editor, and professor. Her contributions to the modern canon are numerous. Some of her acclaimed titles include: The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. She won the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Reviews for Playing in the Dark

[darrol_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I am not competent to review this book; I need to read more of the works analyzed.

[bell7_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Three essays on that originated as Toni Morrison's William E. Massey, Sr., Lectures given at Harvard are here in written form, exploring the way in which an "Africanist" persona is contrasted with individualistic whiteness in American literature.Morrison delivers a challenging read that's just as prescient and timely now as it was when it was printed in 1992. She never calls authors racist, but talks about examples from the works of Poe, Hemingway, Twain and more, and analyzes the way in which race is presented in their works. Her argument that there's a sort of persona that becomes an other, a contrast for protagonists and a fill in for danger or subjugation is especially compelling. My reading was impeded somewhat by not having read the works she was analyzing, and I would want to reread it to get the full impact and mull over her points more. Excellent reading for any student of American literature who would like to think more about how race is written.

[boredgames · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

a genius at work

[randymetcalfe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sometimes I wish that all literary critics were obligated to first serve an apprenticeship as great writers of fiction. Surely, like Toni Morrison, they would then be better able to appreciate the practical challenges and choices writers face. And that might make them more sensitive to what those choices reveal. Although she was well taught as a reader, Morrison says that, “books revealed themselves rather differently to me as a writer.” In Playing in the Dark, Morrison turns that writerly attention on the canon of American literature and asks what effect the largely unspoken Africanist presence in America has had on the choices that writers make. The answer is fascinating.The writing here sometimes explodes in flourishes of enthusiasm, almost poetic. And at times it seems that Morrison is presenting a prolegomena to a future body of criticism, or a platform of work for future students of American literature, rather than critical analysis itself. But when she does turn to specific texts, such as Cather’s Sapphira and the Slave Girl or Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not, her insights are piercing. Her scrutiny of Hemingway’s syntactically awkward locution “saw he had seen” in order to enforce the narrative silence of his black shipmate is a case in point. Morrison’s concern is with the choice made by the writer just there. Perhaps only a serious writer can appreciate the import of such choices.Morrison says that, “thinking about these matters has challenged me as a writer and as a reader.” It’s the kind of thinking that we could each use more of as readers.

[whitewavedarling · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Morrison's essays are both striking and gracefully woven. Her powerful ideas about not just American literature and race, but American identity and ideas of freedom, are unique literary explorations well worth reading for anyone interested in American history and identity or literature. As compositions, the essays come together to form questions on statements regarding freedom and identity which are both thought-provoking and frightening. This book is one worth exploring and re-exploring.

[ltimmel_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is an interesting essay (composed as three lectures) focusing on the tremendous importance of what Morrison calls "Africanism" for the white literary tradition in the US. Morrison writes: "Studies in American Africanism, in my view, should be investigations of the ways in which a nonwhite, Africanist presence and personae have been constructed-- invented-- in the United States, and of the literary uses this fabricated presence has served. In no way do I mean investigation of what might be called racist or nonracist literature, and I take no position, nor do I encourage one, on the quality of a work based on the attitudes of an author or whatever representations are made of some group....My project is to avert the critical gaze from the racial object to the racial subject; from the described and imagined to the describers and imaginers; from the serving to the served."(90) Still, it is interesting that her discussion of Cather's Sapphira and the Slavegirl reveals that the novel's failures are in some sense enabled by a certain obtuseness in its depiction of and use of its black characters. And repeatedly, Morrison notes the necessity of the presence "Africanism" for depicting freedom, individualism, and difference. Looking at a variety of instances where the protagonist meets an impenetrable field or wall of whiteness, Morrison notes "Whiteness, alone, is mute, meaningless, unfathomable, pointless, frozen, veiled, curtained, dreaded, senseless, implacable. Or so our writers seem to say."(59)

[esmeraldus · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Toni Morrison is brilliant, as usual. I can't think of another scholar I admire more.I've read her criticism and her novels, and loved both, but her criticism is the most lucid and perceptive...I can't get over it. Her gifts as a novelist bring something to her critical work that few have ever matched.Maybe no one working today. She elevates criticism to poetry:"For young America, [Romance] had everything: nature as subject matter, a system of symbolism, a thematics of the search for self-valorization and validation--above all, the opportunity to conquer fear imaginatively and to quiet deep insecurities. It offered platforms for moralizing and fabulation, and for the imaginative entertainment of violence, sublime incredibility, and terror--and terror's most significant, overweening ingredient: darkness, with all of the connotative value it awakened."Highly recommended, highly readable, and very short. You can get this into an afternoon easily, although I didn't, and it deserves re-reading.

[omame_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

interesting and well written. she's got some great ideas that made me wish i had an english class to discuss it with.