Don't Make a Saint Out of Toni Morrison

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Don't Make a Saint Out of Toni Morrison"

Cannonball with Wesley Morris – The New York Times
Episode Date: February 26, 2026

---

Overview of the Episode

In this episode of Cannonball, Wesley Morris is joined by writer and critic Parul Sehgal and editor Sasha Weiss to deeply examine the literary legacy of Toni Morrison. The conversation, held on the day after what would have been Morrison's 95th birthday, investigates Morrison's transformative impact on American literature, the risks of her posthumous canonization, and the complexities embedded in her work. With Morrison’s novels being reissued and her influence under renewed discussion, the panel questions what is lost when Morrison is turned into a near-sacred figure rather than being engaged with on human, complicated terms.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Introductions to Toni Morrison

The Importance of First Encounters & Language

• All three panelists recall their early, sometimes uneasy introductions to Morrison’s novels—through book covers, second-hand family stories, and school reading lists.
• Parul Sehgal vividly remembers hiding the cover of The Bluest Eye from classmates and herself, sensing its forbidden knowledge (05:00).
  • Notable quote:
    “It felt like a secret, and I didn't want my white classmates to know. So I used to, in the library, turn the book around... I just got so rattled. I took the cover off…” – Parul Sehgal [05:54]
• Wesley Morris describes being haunted and seduced by the imagery and difficulty of Beloved.
  • Compares Morrison’s difficulty to that of Faulkner and Joyce, but through the prism of African American experience and emotion (03:50).
  • Notable quote:
    “That’s the thing about Toni Morrison. Nobody’s ready. She writes big and dark and bold, humorously about Black Americans and their lives, their inner lives. You just have to be willing.” – Wesley Morris [03:59]

2. Morrison’s Literary Risks and Stylistic Significance

Confronting the Reader; The Power and Danger of Language

• Morrison’s writing style—her “dangerous” sentences and emotional depth—makes her both magnetic and, at times, frightening to her readers.
• Detailed examinations of the opening sentences in works like Jazz and Paradise:
  • “They shot the white girl first.” [08:05]
• Sasha Weiss admits her most profound Morrison experience was realizing what was possible with language:
  • Notable quote:
    “…this immediate recognition that something new is going on with language.” [08:19]

3. The Problem of Canonization — Is Morrison Becoming 'Untouchable'?

Risks of Sanctification and the Loss of Critical Engagement

• Sehgal expresses discomfort at the increasing tendency to canonize Morrison as beyond critique, worrying this “flattens her” and “puts her out of reach” (09:52-11:52).
  • Notable quote:
    “What always makes me a little bit nervous is when somebody is canonized and sanctified and somehow becomes flattened in the process… We cannot work with the ideas… that bedeviled even her.” – Parul Sehgal [10:02]
• Current reissues and public writing often focus on readers’ personal relationships with Morrison rather than the fierce originality and “danger” of her work.
  • Sehgal notes Morrison’s own insistence on critical engagement:
    “If we want better books, we need better critics.” [12:42]

4. The “Dangerous” Passages: Reading Morrison Aloud

Touching Taboo and Thinking the Unthinkable

• The panel reads aloud challenging passages from Tar Baby, The Bluest Eye, and Sula, highlighting how Morrison fearlessly explores sexual violence, incest, communal guilt, and unspeakable taboo.
  • Tar Baby passage (Wesley reads, [16:18–18:07]):
    “He had jangled something in her that was so repulsive, so awful. And he had managed to make her feel that the thing that repelled her was not in him but in her...”
    • Sasha Weiss: “But it’s so crazy to imagine her above us. She’s in us. She’s a street.” [18:14]
  • The Bluest Eye passage (Parul reads, [20:10–22:24]):
    “His revulsion was a reaction to her young, helpless, hopeless presence... He wanted to break her neck. But tenderly.”
  • Sula passage (Sasha reads, [24:06–28:43]):
    Eva, a mother, explains why she killed her son—her “doubled” voice revealing maternal ambivalence and horror.
    • Key reflection: “There is a suggestion of some kind of incestuous desire… the ambivalence. …I want to mother him. I want to be devoured, but I also can’t.” – Sasha Weiss [27:46]

5. Morrison on Black Masculinity and Family

Critiques of Morrison's Portrayal of Black Men; The Complexity of Brokenness and Care

• Discussion around Stanley Crouch’s criticism that Morrison sidelines Black men in works like Beloved, countered by readings that show her deep inquiry into their suffering, arrested development, and complicated relationships with Black women and their own humanity (29:52–35:49).
  • Notable quote:
    “There’s so many people in her novels who are like walking, living abortions. People who weren’t supposed to be, who even in being aren’t.” – Wesley Morris [32:59]
  • Morrison’s work indicts not just systems but also mothers, families, and communities for their roles.

6. Memory, Trauma, and the Collective

Morrison’s Political Understanding of Memory; The Communal Act of Reading

• Morrison centers memory as a profoundly political and collective act, building her narratives around what cannot (or will not) be remembered by a single mind (36:15–38:43).
  • “One mind can’t hold it. But a few minds together might.” – Parul Sehgal [37:25]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Nobody’s ready. She writes big and dark and bold…” – Wesley Morris [03:59]
• “You can do that. You can start a book like this.” – Wesley Morris [08:04]
• “In this, the reader’s need… is starting to supplant her achievement.” – Parul Sehgal [12:44]
• “How does she know these things about people, right?” – Parul Sehgal [18:53]
• “There’s a way that she can show you how this feeling of helplessness moves into a place of absolute maternal entitlement to take that life.” – Parul Sehgal [29:27]
• “It’s always both. … For somebody to feel big, someone else has to feel small.” – Parul Sehgal [35:49]
• “Thinking the unthinkable”—Parul Sehgal on Morrison’s enduring challenge to herself and her readers [35:49–36:15]
• “Some of this is private work. … You’re not selling tickets to watch somebody.” – Wesley Morris [50:26]

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:50–04:53] – Wesley recounts his introduction to Beloved
• [05:54–06:33] – Parul describes hiding her copy of The Bluest Eye
• [08:05] – Famous opening lines from Morrison’s novels discussed
• [09:37–11:52] – The risks of sanctifying Morrison’s legacy
• [16:18–18:07] – “Ruthless” sex and revulsion passage from Tar Baby read aloud
• [20:10–22:24] – Father’s sexual violence from The Bluest Eye
• [24:06–28:43] – Sasha reads Eva’s disturbing monologue in Sula
• [29:52–35:49] – Discussion of Black masculinity and maternal ambivalence in Morrison’s novels
• [36:15–38:43] – “Thinking the unthinkable” and communal acts of memory

---

Conclusion: The Danger of Sanctification and the Value of Wrestling with Morrison

• The episode concludes with all three cautioning against making Morrison “untouchable.” Her true power lies in her capacity to disturb, to provoke thought, and to demand direct engagement with the most difficult parts of human experience. Turning her into a saint may protect her image, but it places her—and the necessary discomfort of her work—out of reach.
• Sasha Weiss best encapsulates the closing ethos:
  “I feel like we’re doing the right thing here, which is actually reading her, but also reading her communally and doing the kind of communal act of remembering that she calls for.” [49:44]

---

Final Thoughts

Wesley, Parul, and Sasha stress the importance of continuing to wrestle with Morrison’s legacy in direct, messy, communal ways—honoring her audacity rather than sanitizing it. Morrison’s books, they agree, are not sacred relics, but living works that demand honest, unsparing engagement.

---

For listeners:
This episode is a masterclass both in reading Morrison and in thinking critically about what we do with literary legacy. The discussion brims with insight, tender anecdotes, and bracing honesty—making Morrison’s work, and the act of engaging with it, feel alive, urgent, and necessary.

Transcript

[BetterHelp Narrator]

This podcast is supported by BetterHelp. February is full of flowers and lots of relationship talk. But whether you're single, married, or dating, just remember you're right on time. Sometimes it feels like everyone has it all together in their love lives, but the truth is, we're all still figuring it out. Therapy can help get some outside perspective from a professional. That can lead to new understanding and a lot less pressure on yourself. And remember, you're right on time. Visit betterhelp.com New York Times for 10% off.

[Wesley Morris]

I'm Wesley Morris, and this is Cannonball Today.

[Sasha Weiss]

Butterfly in the sky.

[Parul Sehgal]

I can go twice as high.

[Sasha Weiss]

Take a look.

[Wesley Morris]

Take a look.

[Sasha Weiss]

It's in a book.

[Wesley Morris]

It's in a book. Book covers, they're funny things. Maybe you can't judge a whole book by one, but let me tell you, sometimes a cover will seduce you to the book and intrigue you enough to pick it up and read it. I remember seeing a paperback of Toni Morrison's Beloved when I was maybe 12 or 13. And it had a woman on the COVID and a lacy dress and a boater hat, and she was translucent, like her brown skin. You could kind of see through it. This was the same book that my mother and my aunts were talking about. And I remember my Aunt Katie telling me I wasn't ready for it, but that cover made me want to know why. So I finally opened it, and eventually I got it. I understood. It's a. It's a hard book. Like James Joyce hard. Like William Faulkner hard. But emotionally, too. Because eventually I realized that the woman on the COVID of that paperback is a version of the adult ghost who comes back to haunt the mother who chose to murder her as an infant rather than let a slave catcher take her away. That's when I also realized Aunt Katie was really, really right. I was not ready. But that's the thing about Toni Morrison. Nobody's ready. She writes big and dark and bold, humorously about black Americans and their lives, their inner lives. You just have to be willing. And seven years after her death, it looks like we're even more willing than we might have been before it. There's a whole raft of Morrison hitting bookstores right now. Her 11 novels have just been reissued with new introductions from writers like Tayari Jones and Jasmine Ward and Jacqueline Woodson and Raven Leilani. There was even a thrilling new book of criticism about those novels by Namwali Serpell called On Morrison. And yet, with all this new Toni Morrison to lose, or, I would say, find ourselves in some people Some institutions who aren't ready for her work would sooner ban her books. Beloved's been banned, the Bluest Eye banned. That's how dangerously she writes. That's the kind of power the stories have. We all know it. But in trying to defend her legacy, as some of these reissues aim to do, something else is happening. Something that both my colleague Carl Sagal and I have noticed, and we wanted to talk about that with our editor, Sasha Weiss. Oh, we had this conversation the day after what would have been Toni Morrison's 95th birthday. So. Happy birthday, Ms. Morrison. Parl. Sasha, you're back. I'm so happy.

[Sasha Weiss]

We're so happy. I'll speak for myself. I'm so happy. No, no, no.

[Parul Sehgal]

Speak for me. Thank you. Thank you for having us.

[Wesley Morris]

Thanks for being here. All right, so our job here today is to just, like, really spend some time thinking about Toni Morrison. And the very obvious thing to do is to just situate ourselves in our relationship. I would say the primal scene of our relationship to this woman who would, you know, she'd really understand where we were coming from. We talked about the primal scene of our relationship. Like, when was the moment that not even that she. But she came into your life where you were aware that there was this person called Toni Morrison and the words entered you.

[Parul Sehgal]

I brought evidence. So I'm here with. This is the evidence.

[Sasha Weiss]

We were wondering about this special book.

[Parul Sehgal]

This is my copy of the Bluest Eye that I stole from my middle school library. But as you notice, I've ripped the COVID And I ripped the COVID off. Because if you're familiar with the story of the Bluest Eye, it's the story of a little girl who is taught to hate herself. She's told that she's ugly. She's told that she is too black. She's told that she's too shriveled and small and just loathsome. And she prays for blue eyes. You know, she prays essentially for safety. She prays for love. And there was a cover that featured a little black girl holding a doll with blonde hair. And I remember seeing it and feeling so skinned, you know, I didn't know. And I just moved back. I'd moved to America, back from India, and I didn't know that other people knew about this, that you could be taught to hate yourself.

[Wesley Morris]

Right, right, right.

[Parul Sehgal]

It felt like a secret, and I didn't want my white classmates to know. So I used to, in the library, turn the book around so the COVID wouldn't be visible. And then finally, I Just got so rattled. I took the COVID off, took the back cover off, and I took it home. I didn't read her, but I just knew that there was something happening here.

[Wesley Morris]

And one day you hadn't actually read it yet.

[Parul Sehgal]

I just knew.

[Sasha Weiss]

You knew there was something in there for you.

[Parul Sehgal]

There was something there. And I just felt that this was something people were being led into, something that I was thinking about, unsettled by. I didn't want them to know, and I myself didn't want to know just yet. So.

[Sasha Weiss]

Which is a really apt way into Toni Morrison, isn't it? Knowing that there's something that you don't want to know about yourself.

[Parul Sehgal]

Yes.

[Sasha Weiss]

That you are being invited to touch. Which is kind of what she does for us.

[Parul Sehgal]

That's exactly what she does. But my actual experience reading it was picking up again. I was twirling the carousels one day, and I picked up Lovett, and I just read those first two sentences. And I think you and I talked about this after she died.

[Sasha Weiss]

Just.

[Parul Sehgal]

I'd never seen sentences like that. And those first two lines are 124, respiteful period, full of a baby's venom. I'd never seen sentences split in that way in these little phrases.

[Wesley Morris]

Well, I mean, my copy of Jazz, I can remember coming. I worked at a movie theater, and I would ride the subway home, and I was reading Jazz. I was looking. Jazz was new. But, like, the first word on the first page with the drop cap makes that it's an S, but it looks like it could be a five. And it's. The word is. That's the first word of Jazz. A sucked tooth. But I was like, fifth, I know that woman who is fifth. I know that woman. Fifth, I know that. And I said it over and over and over again. And about the 27th time I said it, I said the fifth.

[Parul Sehgal]

Oh, it's.

[Sasha Weiss]

It's. She's sucking her teeth.

[Wesley Morris]

And then I kept reading the book, but I understood.

[Parul Sehgal]

But also the same thing. Like, you can do that.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes.

[Parul Sehgal]

You can start a book like this.

[Wesley Morris]

You can start a book like this. I did not know. I did not know. All her books have these. I mean, great opening lines. They shot the white girl first. The first sentence of Paradise. What about you, Sasha?

[Sasha Weiss]

I don't have a powerful origin story with Toni Morrison. I mean, but what I relate to in both of your stories is, like, this immediate recognition that something new is going on with language. And I think I read Song of Solomon in high school, and I think it was part of an awakening to literature. I think it was part of what made me a reader and recognizing that there's all this new stuff you could do with language. So I know she inculcated me into that, but I don't have this, like, zap of a memory that you have. But let's, like, fast forward. Let's fast forward to now. Seven years after she died. We're kind of re. Encountering her, all of us as grown people and the culture. Not that she's ever left. But, you know, she's being. Her legacy is being shored up. Right? People are writing books. Her own books are being reissued. And I think all of us sense, and you've sensed, parle, that something's happening here that feels a little risky or unsettling, and it has to do with Toni Morrison becoming a saint. And I want to know kind of what you see happening and why it feels a little bit risky to you.

[Parul Sehgal]

I mean, I should say that there are few people who deserve canonization more than Toni Morrison. You know, it's one of those things where, you know, have we ever. Has there ever been, like, a Nobel laureate whose own reputation can feel so wobbly? Right?

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah. You mean uncertain, given the stature of the work, the eminence of the quality

[Parul Sehgal]

of the work, 100%. Like she still in some way, feels like she needs defending in some way that I think we'll talk about. But, no, I think right now, 11 of her books are being reissued, and they've been given these new introductions. And there's just a whole lot of personal writing about just in the way that we are, like, what she meant, what she did for people, what she did to the language. And so much of this feels important in the sense that just her influence in the culture and for other novelists feels just exciting to see, right? What she's done for language, what she's done for so many different kinds of thinking. But what always makes me a little bit nervous, right, is when somebody is canonized and sanctified and somehow becomes flattened in the process, you know, becomes somewhat of an eminent figure. And we cannot work with the ideas, you know, and we specifically can't work with the ideas that feel difficult, hot to touch, complicated, that bedeviled even her. And so I think so many of the questions that we're still asking about witness, about repair, about when is violence important in a narrative? When is it cheap Spectacle, right? What do we owe the dead? All of these things are just so alive. And I don't know if there's anybody who's thought about them or felt them or created language to address them in the way that she has. So I just feel like I'm not ready for her to be untouchable yet. You know, I still wanna wrestle and I still wanna disagree with her, you know, And I still want to, in many ways, understand what she's done. To my own thinking, you know, the fact that I can think it all I think is, oh, I owe a lot to Toni Morrison. You know, I'm going to talk about her writing in ways that she's taught me to think about writing that I didn't know was possible.

[Wesley Morris]

Same here.

[Sasha Weiss]

Like, I guess I wanna be clearer about, you know, have we. Have readers forgotten that? Like, what. What is the sanctification? How is it happening? Does it mean that people actually aren't reading her? Are they read? Great question. Like, what is happening? What do you see happening that feels like it's missing something?

[Parul Sehgal]

I think what I feel.

[Sasha Weiss]

I'm trying to be so charitable.

[Parul Sehgal]

Don't be so charitable. No, but I think I'm trying to understand why. Okay, as a prelude, let me just say this. There are few writers for whom critics mattered more to than Toni Morrison. She was obsessed with the reviews. She read everything. She wanted good critics, you know, and she wanted critics, as she said, who could see her in her entire cosmology. She wanted black critics.

[Wesley Morris]

Cosmology's a great word.

[Parul Sehgal]

Her word, not mine, you know, and she'd always said that if we want better books, we need better critics. And I've been trying to understand why so much of the criticism of Morrison and so many of these eulogies feel so hollow to me. I can't find her in them, you know, And I think what I'm finding is the. Is that little pesky pronoun that pops up right away. I, I, I. You know, I feel the reader's need, you know, I feel what she does for people. And it's so powerful. As we began our conversation, it's so immense what she does. But somehow in this, the reader's need. And it sort of is starting to supplant her achievement, which she wanted to do. And what was specific and spiky and. And scary about what she was trying to do. And she always said that she enjoyed the danger of writing the most. And so what is that danger? You know, I want to sort of have something I can hold onto a little bit more. Something I can touch, you know, and continue to work with. And I think that some of the airiness, some of the Romance, the love, all of this puts her out of reach, you know, and clouds her specific work and thought in a way that I find just very, very almost intolerable, you know?

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah.

[Sasha Weiss]

I wonder if she's uniquely hard to read and to talk about. For some reason, you know, like, I wonder why people go to the eye. Because there's something. I mean, I do think it has something to do with what she asks us to confront, which is often danger in ourselves. And the thing. Exactly as you said before, the thing we actually don't wanna look at, she's asking us to look at. And maybe even if you've done it and you're a good reader of her, there's something difficult about going back.

[Wesley Morris]

All right, at the risk of being glib, I. I would like to touch some danger. I brought my family edition of Tar Baby. Can I just read this one thing from these things?

[Parul Sehgal]

Yes.

[Sasha Weiss]

Let's get into it. Let's read her. I mean, let's talk about it.

[Wesley Morris]

I don't know. This is like. I mean, how do I explain this? This is a novel where two of the characters, a black woman and a black man, are kind of figuring out what to do with their attraction to each other. He is. This man has just shown up on this property in the Caribbean. This white man and woman own and operate. Cause, you know, this novel is set with an awareness of a colonial past and in. On this Caribbean island. And at some point, this woman who has essentially been put through school at the Sorbonne by these white people, has, you know, worked as a fashion model.

[Sasha Weiss]

She.

[Wesley Morris]

And this man who she thinks is beneath her, he's like, you know, rough and violent and gross and, like, N word black, with his dreadlocks and his, like, crudeness and, like, obvious sexual desire confuses something in her about what she wants. Anyway, he's very clear in his attraction to her, and she doesn't not want that. She just is. There's a class barrier operating in her that keeps her off him. But she.

[Unidentified Reader/Voice]

The.

[Wesley Morris]

The one of their encounters leaves her with this memory. He had jangled something in her that was so repulsive, so awful. And he had managed to make her feel that the thing that repelled her was not in him but in her. That was why she was ashamed. He was the one who smelled rife, ripe, but she was the one he wanted to smell like an animal, treating her like another animal. And both of them must have looked just like it in that room. One dog sniffing the hindquarters of another. And the female, her back to him not moving but letting herself be sniffed, letting him nuzzle her asshole as the man had nuzzled hers, the bitch never minding that the male never looked her in the face or ran by her side or that he had just come up out of nowhere, smelled her ass and stuck his penis in, humping and jerking and grinding away while she stood there bearing. Actually bearing his whole weight as he pummeled around inside her, not even speaking or barking, his eyes sliced and his mouth open, dripping with saliva. And other dogs, too, waiting, circling, until the engaged dog was through. And then they would mount her also in the street, in broad daylight, no less, not even under a tree or behind a bush, but right there on Morgan street in Baltimore, with cars running by and children playing and the retired postman coming out of his house in his undershirt shouting, get that bitch out of here. We're done. Because that was, first of all, one sentence, just ruthless.

[Parul Sehgal]

Ruthless.

[Sasha Weiss]

But it's so crazy to imagine her above us.

[Wesley Morris]

No, she's like.

[Sasha Weiss]

She's in us. She's a street. She's.

[Wesley Morris]

I mean, all around us. Yeah, I don't know. That was. By the way, do you want to drag? Because that was. I am high just reading that.

[Parul Sehgal]

It's amazing because, like, when we read this, right? Like, it kind of takes our breath away. It takes my breath away again, you know, I've read that passage so many times, but I have never heard it out loud. And I felt. I felt such conflicting feelings, right? You just feel like what she writes about is just forbidden. And how does she know these things about people, Right?

[Wesley Morris]

Wait, what do you mean?

[Parul Sehgal]

Well, she just. She knows how. I mean, I could read this from Song of Solomon, right? Just. She writes about a married couple and how important their mutual hatred of each other is to keep them going. That they both have organized their lives around this quiet, strong hatred of the other. She just knows where the sort of, like, shard of ice lies in our hearts, you know? And it's very interesting because you cannot read her autobiographically, right? She's not really interested in. This is an interesting thing about thinking about, you know, herself and putting her family on the page. She puts, you know, her town on the page. But there's one fact about her that I really love. Her mother was a brilliant musician, and one of the jobs she took was to play piano to accompany silent movies. And I kind of think about. That's Morrison, right? Like, that's Morrison, like the notes for the silent things, the quiet things, the things that we haven't seen. She's there, she's putting this music down and giving us some kind of way to access it, to hear it, to feel it. I don't know. I mean, I still feel completely shocked when I read something like the Bluest Eye. And she writes about sort of how self loathing is taught to children.

[Sasha Weiss]

Will you read something? Did you bring something to me?

[Parul Sehgal]

I did. I did bring something. I brought something that's very hard for me to read. I think a passage. There's a very famous scene in this book in which a father rapes his 11 year old daughter. And what makes it so distinctive and so frightening is that we're very much in his point of view.

[Sasha Weiss]

Can I just say that I'm filled with actual terror right now. Like, I feel terror entering my body, which I think is a pretty particular thing for a writer to elicit. Like. And maybe this is what I meant before. I think it's hard to encounter her, actually, even though we all love doing it. Like, there's a. I feel a hesitation in myself to hear this, even though I deeply want to.

[Parul Sehgal]

I'm not gonna read the actual scene. I don't know if I can. I just wanna read you the scene where he's the father, Charlie, is sitting, he's a little drunk and his 11 year old. Yeah. Comes in and. Yeah. So begins. So it was on a Saturday afternoon in the thin light of spring. He staggered home reeling, drunk, and saw his daughter in the kitchen. She was washing dishes, her small back hunched over the sink. Cholly saw her dimly and could not tell what he saw or what he felt. Then he became aware that he was uncomfortable. Next he felt the discomfort dissolve into pleasure. The sequence of his emotions was revulsion, guilt, pity, then love. His revulsion was a reaction to her young, helpless, hopeless presence. Her back hunched that way, her head to the side as though crouching from a permanent and unrelieved blow. Why did she have to look so whipped? She was a child unburdened. Why wasn't she happy? The clear statement of her misery was an accusation. He wanted to break her neck. But tenderly. I'm not gonna read more because it goes on and on and on and it's sort of. She does this gesture where she scratches the back of one leg with her foot.

[Wesley Morris]

Mm. And it reminds him of the first

[Parul Sehgal]

time he saw her mother.

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah.

[Parul Sehgal]

And then he goes to her and we're so locked in his gaze and his lust and his desire to give her some kind of gift and at the same time his desire to punish her It's.

[Sasha Weiss]

Can I see this for a second?

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah.127 Chali is an amazing. Like, it's an amazing. The daring here is to inhabit this point of view, obviously the point of view of a man.

[Parul Sehgal]

But she also does the same Cap's scene where we. The entire sequence where we've seen him from childhood on, we love him. She's made us love him, feel for him, want to protect him. We've seen him absolutely brutalized, humiliated. And then this is what sort of crowns the sequence.

[Sasha Weiss]

Why do you think it's so important that she's helped us to see him, love him, be him?

[Parul Sehgal]

I think she wants. One of the things that she wants in this book is to say, what if this act is not just one person's fault?

[Wesley Morris]

Mm, mm, mm.

[Parul Sehgal]

Right. What if this was. This whole. The whole community was sort of, in a way, ordained nationalist, you know, in a complicated way. I don't think she wants to say. It's just that she always wants to say yes, but, you know, she always wants it to be both ways. Yes, he did this, but also, how did he get here? What happened? And I think also, in some way, the gaze turns on us in a way that, for example, Nabokov writing, Humbert Humbert. It never really reflects back onto us. I think she wants us to think about where our tenderness turns to ugliness. Ugliness, yeah.

[Sasha Weiss]

It's so interesting how in both of the passages that you both read, like, revulsion and lust are mingled. It's all there. It's all mingled together.

[Parul Sehgal]

But show us your Morrison a little bit. Where do you see this in her work?

[Sasha Weiss]

Well, this is also about recognizing something in a hideousness. I was really surprised to find myself

[Parul Sehgal]

moved.

[Sasha Weiss]

And, I mean, it sounds crazy and sick to say it, but Morrison kind of demands this and invites this to identify with the explanation of a mother who has killed her child. This is from Sula, and the character is Eva, who's a kind of matriarch of a dysfunctional family. This is a horrible death, a fearsome woman, an odd woman, someone who's hard to read, and she kills her grown son by burning him in his bed. And when she does it in the narrative, it's not at all clear why she's done it. It's perplexing. And she does it, and it's kind of not commented upon. And then a little while later, one of her other children, a grown woman, comes to her and says, why did you kill Plum? And this is what Eva says. And I think this is really important the way that it's set up. So Hannah was waiting for her explanation. Hannah's the daughter. When Eva spoke at last, it was with two voices, like two people were talking at the same time, saying the same thing, one fraction of a second behind the other. Which I think is like a bit of a key here, you know, a doubledness of. And I think when you're a mother, you're doubled in ways that are sometimes really difficult to bear. So she says he give me such a time. Such a time. Look like he didn't even want to be born. But he come on out, boys. Is hard to bear. You wouldn't know that, but they is. It was just such a carrying on to get him born and to keep him alive. Just to keep his little heart beating and his little old lungs cleared and looked like when he came back from that war, he wanted to get back in. After all that carrying on, just getting him out and keeping him alive. He wanted to crawl back in my womb and well, I ain't got the room no more. Even if he could do it, there wasn't space for him in my womb. And he was crawling back, being helpless and thinking baby thoughts and dreaming baby dreams and messing up his pants again and smiling all the time. I had room enough in my heart, but not in my womb. Not no more. I birthed him once, I couldn't do it again. He was growed a big old thing. God have mercy. I couldn't birth him twice. I'd be laying here at night and he'd be downstairs in that room. But when I closed my eyes, I'd see him. 6. This is the part that really gets me. 6. And this is also where revulsion and some kind of lust or wanting mingle with. I mean, she's touching something that's very hard to touch here. Six feet tall and crawling up the stairs quiet like so I wouldn't hear. And opening the door soft so I wouldn't hear and he'd be creep. Trying to spread my legs, trying to get back up in my womb. He was a man, girl, a big old growed up man. I didn't have that much room. I kept on dreaming it, dreaming it, and I knowed it was true. One night it wouldn't be no dream, it'd be true. And I would have done it, would have let him if I'd had the room. But a big man can't be a baby all wrapped up inside his mama no more. He suffocate. I done everything I could to make him Leave me and go on and live and be a man. But he wouldn't, and I had to keep him out. So I just thought of a way he could die like a man. Not all scrunched up inside my womb, but like a man. It's such a complicated set of thoughts and feelings, taboo and taboo and things

[Parul Sehgal]

that I don't think most people have even plucked out of themselves that. Do I feel this. Do I feel like I'm being devoured by this child's need? Do I feel.

[Sasha Weiss]

And also the suggestion here that. I mean, there is a suggestion of some kind of incestuous desire always, you know, that she also dreamed this. That this man came inside her and spread her legs. So there's some suggestion, not that she wants it, but that the desire is hers too. This ambivalence. I want to mother him. I want to be devoured, but I also can't. I can't. And the limitation of that and the revulsion at your own limitation, and I don't know, to me, all of those feelings are so recognizable. And not to say that I. You know, I don't think she's exactly asking us to condone it, but I think she is asking us to kind of hold it. And I was reading it late at night, and I just like. I mean, again, this almost physical sensation of being electrified, inhabited. Something done to me.

[Parul Sehgal]

No, I'm just. The way that she can write the logic of it. Right. So I'd read Sula so many times. And the audiobook is wonderful because when Morrison reads that part, she's kind of like muttering to herself, I had room enough in my heart, but not in my womb.

[Sasha Weiss]

Not no more.

[Parul Sehgal]

The way we mutter to ourselves when we're cleaning and just saying, I can't. This is not happening. Enough of this. I birthed him once, I couldn't do it again. He was growed a big old thing.

[Sasha Weiss]

God have mercy.

[Parul Sehgal]

I couldn't birth him twice. It's a wonderful, wonderful sequence. But I listened to it so many times and read it so many times and never really sort of absorbed the horror of it because I was so on Eva's side.

[Sasha Weiss]

Yeah.

[Parul Sehgal]

You know, it was only much later than I realized that she burned that boy a lot. And the way that she can show you how this feeling of helplessness moves into a place of absolute maternal entitlement to take that life is. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't. I. There's so many moments in these books where I'm like, nobody Else has taken me to this particular place.

[Wesley Morris]

You know, I feel like what's interesting here is we've now, among the three of us, read passages that involve her thinking through what black men are doing to black women. And one of the criticisms of her from a class of black male critic and scholar is that, I mean, Stanley Crouch, she gets the Nobel Prize the next day or maybe the same day Stanley Crouch is. I don't know if he was on Charlie Rose, I don't know if he wrote an op ed, but he's essentially decrying Beloved all over again. And he's famously dismissed Beloved for being a blackface Holocaust novel in a piece that he'd written. But this was him essentially saying that Beloved is a terrible book in part because it pushes black men off to the side. But Cholli is interesting because I found the passage in the book, by the way, that I had been looking for. And it's interesting to be thinking about these men as carrying around some childhood injury or some like, underdeveloped aspect of themselves that has been kept from fully forming and. Or wanting to escape what awaits, what it means to be an adult man in this country. You know, He knew if he was very still, he would be alright. But then the trace of pain edged his eyes and he had to use everything to send it away. If he was very still, he thought, and kept his eyes on one thing. The tears would not come. So he sat in the dripping honey sun, pulling every nerve and muscle into service to stop the fall of water from his eyes. While straining in this way, focusing every. Every erg of energy. Wow, Tony, thanks for bringing that word back up. While straining in this way, focusing every erg of energy on his eyes, his bowels suddenly opened up. Before he could realize what he knew, liquid stools were running down his legs and the mouth of the alley where his father was on an orange crate in the sun, on a street full of grown men and women. He had sold himself like a baby. I mean, this is not even the thing that I meant to read, by the way. That was an accident. There's a whole other passage about the negation of him. The like, the accident of him. Yeah, and there's so many people in her novels who are like walking, living abortions. People who weren't supposed to be, who even in being aren't. There's a very black thing about this book is being born. And wow, being born but not being real. Forget invisibility, like just not even existing, because at least an invisible person is visible to Himself. A lot of these men don't want to be in the place that they are. Like nostalgia for Plum is being unborn. He is nostalgic for a time in which he isn't even human yet. And I mean, you know, an unsophisticated reader might read this and say, well, Tony doesn't like black men. That is. That is very not true. I mean, there's almost nobody who understands some woman of two black sons. Yeah, she really understands what it is like to send these people out into the world. And Plum is probably better off burnt up then waiting for whatever in the world of this book awaits him.

[Parul Sehgal]

But I do think that there's an indictment very frequently in her books. Right. I think you're right to say that there's a certain kind of way that we see men who are stuck in some way, frozen in some way. Right. And there's an indictment of society, there's an indictment of culture, but there's also, again and again, an indictment of specific mothers. Right?

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah. Clement system. It's not just a system.

[Parul Sehgal]

It's always both. It's always both. It's the mother in Song of Solomon who will not stop breastfeeding her son because that is the one satisfaction she has in her life. And then one day somebody peeks and sees that his legs are trailing on the floor and she has to let him go.

[Sasha Weiss]

Right.

[Parul Sehgal]

Milkman's mother. Or it's Eva in the book. Right. Who also looks after all of these urchins, these little boys, and she gives them all the same name, the Deweys.

[Sasha Weiss]

Right.

[Parul Sehgal]

And they never grow up either. Right. So we see also this complicated family psychological unit of what is actually happening, who is allowed to grow, who is kept small, why and how, and for whose sometimes pleasure. Right. And for whose use. So it's always this swiveling motion in her books that are looking out into the culture and looking very, very deep into this notion of for somebody to feel big, someone else has to feel small.

[Sasha Weiss]

There's this phrase that you've talked about that Toni Morrison loved, which is thinking the unthinkable. I love that phrase. And I think it is what she invites us to do. It's also heart to do it. But, yeah, I wanted you to talk about that phrase and what you think she meant by it.

[Parul Sehgal]

She never clarified helpfully, but she often talked about it. She said, this is what I want to do. And in writers that she loved, she would say the same thing that we're all kind of saying. How does she know this? How did she put language to this? And I think very simply, when she. Or my sense of it is that she's very interested in what the mind cannot absorb for whatever complicated reasons. So one, it might be what the mind can't absorb because the suffering or pain is too large or too obscene.

[Sasha Weiss]

Right.

[Parul Sehgal]

So these are scenes in Beloved that we see. Sethe's mind cannot actually remember, access a memory like a tableau, but she can hold on a corner. She can remember the way that the trees looked, or she can remember the way that the tombstone looked.

[Sasha Weiss]

Right.

[Parul Sehgal]

Because to see it all happening would just destroy her. It would annihilate her. We see a variety of ways and a variety of things that different characters have of coping with what their minds cannot hold. And in some ways, each book is built around what these characters are avoiding looking at and they're pushed to discover. Usually. Right. There's a sense in her books that I feel that one mind can't hold it. But a few minds together might. A friend will.

[Sasha Weiss]

Right.

[Parul Sehgal]

So there's that feeling in her that one mind will break if it tries to look at it straight. But several minds together, or a mind's coming together and looking at it through a kind of story, through this kind of apparatus, it can be seen she

[Wesley Morris]

has invented another way of looking at the human condition. And no one had ever really applied the sort of principles of literary theory in practice to fictional characters who've come out of American enslavement. And how do you embody disembody that experience in a way that doesn't totalize it keeps it particular to one person's experience.

[Parul Sehgal]

I think this is what's so powerful in her work and why it gets so contested, is that she talks about memory as this incredibly political act. You know, she was the first.

[Sasha Weiss]

Right.

[Parul Sehgal]

I feel like in book after book to say that it's no small thing when you remember and pass on these stories, what happens?

[Wesley Morris]

All right, we should take a break though, because we should just take a break.

[Sasha Weiss]

We need one.

[Wesley Morris]

I need to blow my nose. And we'll take a break. When we we come back, we'll talk about, like, what it means to sanctify and misremember her. We'll be right back.

[Unidentified Reader/Voice]

Nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor, winner of two Golden Globes, the Secret Agent is the most acclaimed international film of the year. Wagner Mora gives the year's best performance as a hunted man on the run trying to reunite night with his child during Brazil's notorious military dictatorship. Director Clber Mendonza Figlio crafts the political thriller of the year. An empowering epic steeped in history, a love for cinema, and a tribute to all forms of resistance against authoritarian regimes. You will never forget the secret Agent.

[BetterHelp Narrator]

This podcast is supported by Better Help. February is full of flowers and lots of relationship talk. But whether you're single, married, or dating, just remember you're right on time. Sometimes it feels like everyone has it all together in their love lives, but the truth is, we're all still figuring it out. Therapy can help get some outside perspective from a professional. That can lead to new understanding and a lot less pressure on yourself. And remember, you're right on time. Visit betterhelp.com newyorktimes For 10% off, I'm opening up Crossplay.

[Sasha Weiss]

I've been playing against Dan, my colleague

[Parul Sehgal]

at the New York Times.

[Wesley Morris]

Kat's played another move.

[Sasha Weiss]

Ugh.

[Wesley Morris]

She played Stoop for 36 points.

[Parul Sehgal]

I've got a Z, which is 10 points.

[Wesley Morris]

I'm guessing Tenga is not a word. Let's see. Tenga is a word.

[Parul Sehgal]

Oh, Dan played his last turn. Let's see who won. It's so close. But I did win.

[BetterHelp Narrator]

New York Times game subscribers get full access to Crossplay, our first two player word game. Subscribe now for a special offer on all of our games.

[Wesley Morris]

Okay, we're back.

[Sasha Weiss]

And

[Wesley Morris]

I think where we've arrived is the question is this question of with Toni Morrison, what we do with her dead and with these books living on, and the person manages to sail into some new zone where she can't be reached anymore and begins to serve a very kind of almost religious or holy function.

[Sasha Weiss]

And maybe we pause for a minute on the desire to do that or the impulse to do that and where it comes from.

[Wesley Morris]

I understand that too.

[Sasha Weiss]

I mean, because it's complicated. Because on the one hand, I think that after starting to plumb some of these texts, like one of the feelings I experienced in addition to horror, pain, exhaustion, passion, was awe. Right? I mean, awe is part of what you feel before this monumental artist. So I think there's some kind of genuine sense of awe that is part of it. But then I think it also maybe comes from a kind of protective impulse.

[Judson Jones]

Partly.

[Sasha Weiss]

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I mean, which I think, like you've told me that you kind of understand.

[Wesley Morris]

I do.

[Sasha Weiss]

And feel even.

[Wesley Morris]

I mean, I think we would all. I mean, I think we've been talking about this person possibly still being underrated,

[Sasha Weiss]

which is insane.

[Wesley Morris]

But it.

[Sasha Weiss]

But it's true.

[BetterHelp Narrator]

It's true.

[Wesley Morris]

It's true. And, you know, I think that just thinking about how saints become saints, right? Like, what it is, what sainthood really is, is a bunch of, I mean, with all due respect to like, you know, how this happens. It's a bunch of people getting together and being like, this person has suffered greatly. Roasted on a spit saint. This person flogged in the streets by the entire community saint. Like, there's so much death and violence and, you know, dismemberment that makes some people candidates for sainthood. You suffer, you were made to suffer in this, in this, you know, in the sort of canonical understanding of how this process works.

[Parul Sehgal]

I think you're. You're helping me understand something, right, because you said that, you know, what happens before someone is canonized, some act of great suffering, right? Some kind of sacrifice happens. I'm trying to think of being sacrificed, right? And I'm trying to think like, well, what was it for Morrison? Like, what?

[Sasha Weiss]

How.

[Parul Sehgal]

And I do think that, you know, I think it has to do with Beloved. I think that if you don't have Beloved, you have a set of intricate, beautiful, sharp, sort of generation defining novels. But the suffering in Beloved and the way that she found a language for it, right, and the way that, you know, you brought up the Stanley Crouch criticism, right, that she sort of pushed black men suffering to the side in that novel. He's not wrong. One of the things that she did, where she said that book came from was thinking about Frederick Douglass. And she said that Frederick Douglass could talk about so many different kinds of suffering. He could not talk about sexual exploitation and the rape of women. It was like there was a veil there, right? And she wanted to push aside that veil, you know, and she wanted to find a language for. Up until that book, it really was not written about, talked about, discussed, you know, with the kind of interest and importance and mourning, you know, what happened to women? What did women bear during chattel slavery. And I think there's a way that she writes about, writes about the Middle Passage and writes in the voice of people on the ships, right? And writes from the perspective and gets away with it in a way that is incredibly difficult to do. You know, she enters their point of view, she finds a language for it. And I do think in some ways she becomes, in a complicated way. And I'm not sure, I'm not sure I completely agree with it, but I'm trying to think my way through this point. But I do think that there's something about that book that felt like she became a transmitter of this history in a way that feels incredibly, in her own body almost, she became something more than just a writer with that particular book. It does not happen without that book. So much to the point that that book, and Stanley Crouch says that that book was a black Holocaust novel. Black face Holocaust, blackface Holocaust, which is insane and insulting. But what's so interesting about that book is how important that book became to Holocaust scholars like Mariana Hirsch. So many people use that particular book to say, how do we find a language for memory that's being transmitted in these interesting, complicated, patchy ways? Why is it that my child knows something, that my grandparents went through what is happening, and they draw again and again on that? So something, I think, surrounding the mystery of its creation and its power and its success at speaking for some of the victims of the most unspeakable crimes in history, I think just kind of attaches to her in this way. I don't know.

[Wesley Morris]

I think you're right to identify Beloved as the kind of hinge work in some way, or like the apotheosis of the project also, just like the miracle,

[Parul Sehgal]

something happens.

[Sasha Weiss]

And also thinking about, I mean, I think this is what you're part of what you're getting at, that what actually happens to a person who does this kind of channeling. What did it cost her? What was her suffering? I mean, I guess, you know, and I think, you know, what we're talking about in a funny way, I mean, is the case for her sainthood, right? The case for some kind of, you know, kind of trans historical energy that she was able to be a vessel for. I mean, there is something kind of miraculous.

[Parul Sehgal]

I'm not convinced what's going on.

[Sasha Weiss]

Well, let's make the case against. I mean, I don't think any of us are quite convinced.

[Wesley Morris]

I'm not. Not convinced. I just think that. I think that what made her such an outstanding, I mean, lodestar vessel, Oracle of atrocity, was that it was. This book came out in 1987. We were still dealing with understanding all of these atrocities, but we had like, in my understanding, I mean, I was a kid, but I was much more aware of the civil Rights movement and the Holocaust as being these great 20th century galvanizations of peoples. But slavery was not one of those things. It was not one of those events that we were coming to a national understanding about. And this book, I think, made her a translator of it beyond the text itself. She was now responsible for explaining what people could not understand when they went to this text. But I think what made her. So prominent as a voice of this experience was that she was the first person to really try to achieve it as a psychological condition that lives in the present.

[Parul Sehgal]

Mm. And I think that this question of, like, what attitude to take towards some of our unequivocal geniuses. Right. If she must be on a pedestal because she. She can perform these functions for people, I think that. That is. No one would object to that. Right. But one wants the ideas to still live and work among us.

[Sasha Weiss]

I feel like we're doing the right thing here, which is actually reading her, but also reading her communally and doing the kind of communal act of remembering that she calls for.

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah. I will say, though, I know we're dismounting here, but, I mean, but there is a caveat, right? Which is that, you know, there are. There are occasions for that memory, for that remembering. And, you know, I don't know, like, some of this is private work. Right. Some of this is intimate and you just being alone with the text and. Right. I mean, look at. Look at. Look at this.

[Sasha Weiss]

Look at this book that was mauled or destroyed, you know, for the sake of privacy.

[Wesley Morris]

You're not selling tickets to watch somebody.

[Sasha Weiss]

But also, no one could know. No one could know.

[Parul Sehgal]

No one could know.

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Parul Sehgal]

My middle school is going to contact me tomorrow. I know.

[Wesley Morris]

Thanks for coming and talking about Toni Morrison parle and writing that wonderful piece. Thank you.

[Parul Sehgal]

You too, essay.

[Wesley Morris]

Thank you, Sasha.

[Sasha Weiss]

Thank you. I'm stunned into silence by this incredible conversation.

[BetterHelp Narrator]

This podcast is supported by BetterHelp. February is full of flowers and lots of relationship talk. But whether you're single, married, or dating, just remember you're right on time. Sometimes it feels like everyone has it all together in their love lives, but the truth is, we're all still figuring it out. Therapy can help get some outside perspective from a professional that can lead to new understanding and a lot less pressure on yourself. And remember, you're right on time. Visit betterhelp.com New York Times for 10%

[Judson Jones]

off I'm Judson Jones. I'm a reporter and meteorologist at the New York Times. For about two decades, I've been covering extreme weather, which is getting worse because of climate change. And it's becoming more important to get timely and accurate weather information. That's why we send these customized newsletters letting you know up to three days in advance about extreme weather that could impact you or a place you care about. At the Times, you can be confident that everything we publish is based off the most accurate, scientific, embedded information available. To us because we want you to be able to make real time decisions about how to go about your life. This is the kind of work that makes subscribing to the New York Times so valuable. And it's how you can support fact based independent journalism. So if you'd like to subscribe, go to nytimes.com subscribe.

[Wesley Morris]

Before we go, I want to take a moment to sing the praises of one of our great actors, Delroy Lindo. This person had a difficult weekend and I was not gonna get into it because I don't wanna sort of traffic in this unpleasantness right now. Cause I'm in a good mood. But you know, in the spirit of Ms. Toni Morrison and speaking to difficulty and ugliness to just say that it happened instead of pretending that it didn't. I just wanna at least acknowledge that he and Michael B. Jordan were called the N word from somewhere in the auditorium at the BAFTA Awards. And I'm like, you know what? These two guys are having the year and a half of their lives. Of course somebody is going to try to remind them that they don't deserve it, even if it's by accident. But the reason to bring it up is Delroy Lindo has been working for a long time as a professional actor. He has never been to this many award shows. I don't think in his life that he has been because of Sinners. And one of the award shows he's about to go to is the Academy Awards, where he has never been as a nominee. And it's about time.

[Delroy Lindo (voice clips)]

See, white folks, they like the blues just fine. They just don't like the people who make it.

[Wesley Morris]

He plays Delta Slim in Ryan Coogler. Sinners.

[Delroy Lindo (voice clips)]

Rice said he was gonna take that money going out to Little Rock, starting a little church.

[Wesley Morris]

It's a wonderful performance. He's got this extremely good monologue in a car that one of the Michael B. Jordans is driving in that movie.

[Delroy Lindo (voice clips)]

Clank got a hold to him, searched his pockets, found all that money, made up a story about him killing some white man for it and raping that white man's wife and the lynching right there, there in the railroad station.

[Wesley Morris]

And my question is, what took y' all so long? Academy voters, you had so many opportunities to give this man a nomination for something. Could have been Crooklyn, could have been Get Shorty. I mean, he stole that movie and everybody was trying to steal that thing. West Indian Archie and Malcolm X. I mean, money on the table. But maybe my favorite Delroy Lindo performance is In Clockers, where he plays the neighborhood drug dealer. Rodney, how you always know when I'm

[Parul Sehgal]

coming out of somewhere?

[Delroy Lindo (voice clips)]

Don't you know?

[Unidentified Reader/Voice]

I know everything.

[Wesley Morris]

He is doing monologues and cars all day long. He's got at least two in that movie that I remember. And in one of them, he picks up Makai Pfeiffer. He's coming out of the hospital and proceeds to be like, I heard the

[Delroy Lindo (voice clips)]

homicide came back on you again yesterday.

[Wesley Morris]

Are you talking to the cops?

[Delroy Lindo (voice clips)]

You don't even fuck about us now.

[Wesley Morris]

What? Are you talking to the cops?

[Delroy Lindo (voice clips)]

Come on, get in, get in.

[Wesley Morris]

This is such a good performance because at every moment, this man is sort of balancing dualities. He's very cool and calm, but he's also gotta be a little bit paranoid because, you know, neighborhood drug dealer in 1995, not an easy job.

[Delroy Lindo (voice clips)]

I mean, you happen to be a low life rap bastard motherfucker who would sell off his newborn for suck off that glass dick crack will bring it right on in the light.

[Wesley Morris]

Delroy Lindo is so good at just like keeping it like this and emanating gravitas, emanating danger, emanating cool. He never blows his top, rarely blows his top. And that is something that Delta Slim and Rodney have in common. Besides giving really good speeches in cars, which is they're operating at a very, very scintillating room temperature.

[Delroy Lindo (voice clips)]

You don't worry about the thing, huh? Devil done came for me plenty of times. If he come knocking tonight, he gonna have to go through his old friend Delta Slim before he get to you.

[Wesley Morris]

So I don't know what these people doing these Oscars this year are planning, but I am almost praying that somebody involved with this production is like, we have to expunge, expel, exorcise those BAFTA demons for these two men. The other person being, of course, Michael B. Jordan. Somebody is likely to find a way to get these two on stage or just in the audience, just in the room to applaud, exercise the racism away. I mean, not all the racism because it is Hollywood, but just Delroy Lindo is having, I would say the month, two months, three months, six months of his professional life. And I just am relieved that he will get to put this horrible incident from last week behind him. I am just happy to see Delroy Lane Lindo be an Academy Award nominee. I'm just really excited for that. Dreams do come true. This episode of Cannonball was produced by John White, Janelle Anderson, Elissa Dudley and Austin Mitchell. It was edited by Lisa Tobin. It was fact checked by Caitlin Love. Daniel Ramirez engineered this episode. Matty Masiello, Kyle Grandillo and Nick Pittman recorded it. Dan Powell and Diane Wong did the original music. Our theme music, as always, is by Justin Ellington. Bobby Doherty, he took the photo art for our show. Our video team is Brooke Minters and Felice Leon. This episode was filmed by Alfredo Chiarapa, Lauren Pruitt, Thomas Trudeau and Jadzia Erskine. It was edited by Jeremy Rocklin and Amy marino. We're on YouTube. We always are. Please subscribe next week. We were all rooting for you.