On Reading ‘Beloved’ Over and Over Again

The Book Review

The New York Times

Books, Arts

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2023

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Salamishah Tillet, a Pulitzer-winning critic, discusses the book she has read the most over the course of her life — Toni Morrison’s classic novel of slavery and trauma.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Gilbert Cruz and this is the Book Review Podcast.
0:11.6	We're on the other side of Memorial Day and the summer stretches out before us.
0:15.2	It's time to read, it's time to read by the beach, by the lake, on a hammock in your back
0:20.7	yard, or maybe even while you're sitting in Central Park.
0:24.4	Here, on the podcast, I'm looking forward to having some fun conversations with editors
0:29.1	and writers, as well as several interviews with some fantastic authors.
0:33.1	Recently, I went down to Princeton University to the Great Firestone Library to check out
0:37.5	an exhibition called Tony Morrison's Sites of Memory before it closed.
0:42.6	Morrison, who died in 2019, was one of the great American writers, a Nobel laureate and a
0:48.2	Pulitzer Prize winner.
0:50.0	This exhibition, which contained a collection of items from Morrison's archive, was relatively
0:55.2	small, but it was pretty amazing.
0:59.3	There were early outlines of novels from her day planner, letters from people like Nina
1:04.5	Simone, incredible pages that were all burned around the edges because they were saved
1:10.6	from a house fire that she had in the early 90s, and there were draft pages of books like
1:15.8	her classic beloved.
1:18.7	About a year ago, right after she won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism, I spoke to times
1:23.1	contributing critic at large, Salamita Tillet, about beloved.
1:27.8	That conversation, which we recorded for our short series, which subscribers can now
1:31.9	find on our new app, New York Times Audio, has never run here on the podcast and we're
1:36.4	doing so now.
1:37.9	Perhaps it might inspire you to read or reread the book.
	...

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