false 11337 47 <b>Oprah Book Club® Selection, April 2000:</b> Originally published in 1970, <I>The Bluest Eye</I> is Toni Morrison's first novel. In an afterword written more than two decades later, the author expressed her dissatisfaction with the book's language and structure: "It required a sophistication unavailable to me." Perhaps we can chalk up this verdict to modesty, or to the Nobel laureate's impossibly high standards of quality control. In any case, her debut is nothing if not sophisticated, in terms of both narrative ingenuity and rhetorical sweep. It also shows the young author drawing a bead on the subjects that would dominate much of her career: racial hatred, historical memory, and the dazzling or degrading power of language itself. Set in Lorain, Ohio, in 1941, <I>The Bluest Eye</I> is something of an ensemble piece. The point of view is passed like a baton from one character to the next, with Morrison's own voice functioning as a kind of gold standard throughout. The focus, though, is on an 11-year-old black girl named Pecola Breedlove, whose entire family has been given a cosmetic cross to bear: <p> "You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.... And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it." </p> There are far uglier things in the world than, well, ugliness, and poor Pecola is subjected to most of them. She's spat upon, ridiculed, and ultimately raped and impregnated by her own father. No wonder she yearns to be the very opposite of what she is--yearns, in other words, to be a white child, possessed of the blondest hair and the bluest eye. <p> This vein of self-hatred is exactly what keeps Morrison's novel from devolving into a cut-and-dried scenario of victimization. She may in fact pin <I>too</I> much of the blame on the beauty myth: "Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion." Yet the destructive power of these ideas is essentially colorblind, which gives <I>The Bluest Eye</I> the sort of universal reach that Morrison's imitators can only dream of. And that, combined with the novel's modulated pathos and musical, fine-grained language, makes for not merely a sophisticated debut but a permanent one. <I>--James Marcus</I> 1987778 1969 The Bluest Eye total:18371|5:5181|4:7181|3:4513|2:1125|1:371| 18371 70789 22235 1125 11337 0452287065 9780452287068 15144 899 3.85 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166469337m/11337.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11337.The_Bluest_Eye 5 31 false Thu Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Wed May 09 13:37:31 -0700 2007 Wed May 09 13:48:17 -0700 2007 more...]]> 292327 0307278441 9780307278449 556 38 3.85 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1207638746m/292327.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/292327.The_Bluest_Eye 4 19 false Sun Jan 18 13:41:13 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 18 17:27:01 -0800 2009
http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/36813...

she checked out the reviews on amazon for the bluest eye and listed some excerpts:


"...more...]]> 11337 0452287065 9780452287068 15144 899 3.85 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166469337m/11337.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11337.The_Bluest_Eye 5 16 false Thu Feb 07 07:47:10 -0800 2008 Thu Feb 07 08:25:21 -0800 2008 more...]]> 11337 0452287065 9780452287068 15144 899 3.85 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166469337m/11337.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11337.The_Bluest_Eye 5 4 false Sat Jun 21 21:14:17 -0700 2008 Wed Jun 25 21:24:25 -0700 2008 more...]]> 519524 0451183673 9780451183675 382 37 3.85 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175482181m/519524.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/519524.The_Bluest_Eye 4 3 false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Fri Sep 28 20:01:50 -0700 2007 Fri Sep 28 20:50:33 -0700 2007 more...]]> 11337 0452287065 9780452287068 15144 899 3.85 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166469337m/11337.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11337.The_Bluest_Eye 4 3 false Fri May 29 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri May 29 22:23:18 -0700 2009 Fri May 29 22:23:18 -0700 2009
I didn't like the book. As the author herself states in the afterward, ...more...]]> 5219 0452282195 9780452282193 1565 76 3.85 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165518309m/5219.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5219.The_Bluest_Eye 4 3 false Tue Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Apr 27 17:43:14 -0700 2008 Mon May 12 20:22:54 -0700 2008
This novel is set in 1940s Ohio and is the story of Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, who prays every day to be beautiful. She is not at all what t...more...]]> 5219 0452282195 9780452282193 1565 76 3.85 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165518309m/5219.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5219.The_Bluest_Eye 3 4 false Mon Dec 29 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 15 17:50:28 -0800 2008 Tue Dec 30 17:43:23 -0800 2008 more...]]> 11337 0452287065 9780452287068 15144 899 3.85 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166469337m/11337.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11337.The_Bluest_Eye 4 2 false Fri Feb 22 09:30:59 -0800 2008 Fri Feb 22 09:38:24 -0800 2008
As a feminist, I have been wondering lately about ...more...]]> 11337 0452287065 9780452287068 15144 899 3.85 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166469337m/11337.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11337.The_Bluest_Eye 3 2 false Thu Sep 11 12:23:06 -0700 2008 Tue Oct 07 21:09:53 -0700 2008
This is part of what fiction is supposed to be. It's supposed to help us understand ourselves better, by showing us things that we are, and things that we aren't, by showing...more...]]> 11337 0452287065 9780452287068 15144 899 3.85 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166469337m/11337.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11337.The_Bluest_Eye 3 1 false Thu Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Mon Jul 07 09:35:05 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 08 13:17:58 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5219 0452282195 9780452282193 1565 76 3.85 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165518309m/5219.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5219.The_Bluest_Eye 5 1 false Tue May 08 14:54:52 -0700 2007 Wed May 23 12:11:10 -0700 2007 was something distancing, though. Pecola was--and her pain was--so ...more...]]> 11337 0452287065 9780452287068 15144 899 3.85 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166469337m/11337.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11337.The_Bluest_Eye 4 1 false Wed May 14 19:38:42 -0700 2008 Wed May 21 17:14:17 -0700 2008 more...]]> 11337 0452287065 9780452287068 15144 899 3.85 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166469337m/11337.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11337.The_Bluest_Eye 4 2 false Wed Nov 19 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 28 21:53:28 -0800 2009 Wed Jan 28 21:53:28 -0800 2009 11337 0452287065 9780452287068 15144 899 3.85 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166469337m/11337.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11337.The_Bluest_Eye 3 1 false Wed Nov 12 21:41:27 -0800 2008 Wed Nov 12 21:41:27 -0800 2008 I especially enjoyed the Faulknerian overtones where the main character converses with a shadow-self. Sparse, severe, drastic, dire....

I love the way she can turn a paragraph...The sentences hang together to create a whole. It's one thing to write a sentence or even a chapter, bu...more...]]> 11337 0452287065 9780452287068 15144 899 3.85 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166469337m/11337.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11337.The_Bluest_Eye 3 0 true Sat Mar 14 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Mar 24 20:43:42 -0700 2009 Tue Mar 24 21:01:50 -0700 2009 more...]]> 11337 0452287065 9780452287068 15144 899 3.85 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166469337m/11337.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11337.The_Bluest_Eye 3 0 false Wed Feb 18 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Wed Feb 18 20:08:56 -0800 2009 Wed Feb 18 20:20:08 -0800 2009 more...]]> 11337 0452287065 9780452287068 15144 899 3.85 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166469337m/11337.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11337.The_Bluest_Eye 4 0 false Sat Dec 05 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Dec 13 15:17:22 -0800 2009 Sun Dec 13 15:17:41 -0800 2009 1 more...]]> 11337 0452287065 9780452287068 15144 899 3.85 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166469337m/11337.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11337.The_Bluest_Eye 4 0 false Mon Dec 07 12:54:48 -0800 2009 Mon Dec 07 12:55:40 -0800 2009 more...]]> 11337 0452287065 9780452287068 15144 899 3.85 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166469337m/11337.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11337.The_Bluest_Eye 3 0 false Wed Oct 28 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Nov 01 08:38:01 -0800 2009 Sun Nov 01 09:28:18 -0800 2009 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=3355506