Toni

These photographs are by Jill Krementz, and were taken of the author Toni Morrison while she was an editor at Random House, in the nineteen-seventies. On Fridays, the esteemed author taught a class at Yale, in the African-American studies department (at the time it was in a basement somewhere). When I asked her then employer, former Random House director, Jason Epstein, why Morrison taught at the end of her week, he said: Random House paid five cents then. The photographs kill me, being, as they are, a rare glimpse into what a working writer’s life is actually like, free of the usual Jane Addams sentimentality. The pictures say, You do what you need to do to make your life. I am particularly struck by Morrison on the Metro North–picked up in Grand Central–on her way to New Haven. Her briefcase on her lap, she’s making notes–perhaps on a student’s paper, perhaps for her talk, perhaps for one of her books. The light illuminates her as she writes; again, we’re given a real glimpse into the writer living in the every day. At the time these photographs were taken, I was a student at SUNY Purchase; to get home to Brooklyn from Purchase, I took a train that stopped in Grand Central. One day, making my way through the terminal, I saw Morrison’s then just out third novel, “Song of Solomon.” I spent every cent I had on that book, and couldn’t put it down: she had created a world. But what did it take to create a world? I wanted to create a world. That meant not living in the world, right? You sat in a room and shut the world out. How did you do that? Imagine, then, how amazed and gratified I was when I read, in a 1981 Newsweek cover story by Jean Strouse on Morrison, descriptions of Morrison’s daily life in Upper Nyack, her work as an editor, her life as a mother. I recognized her; I had a brother and a single mother, too. Years passed, and I started to teach at Yale, while working for a company that was owned by the man who owned Random House, for a time. In any case, while at that company, I ended up writing a profile about Toni Morrison. Our conversations took place in Morrison’s home, and in a restaurant nearby. As we talked, what struck me most was how much the writer had allowed her life; that is, she had allowed herself the space to create, and to nurture, and to be lauded. I didn’t know many women let alone women or people of color who managed to do that and the question hung in the air: How did you allow yourself to become yourself? One day, as we sat in her studio, she complimented me on a pair of shoes I had on; I told her I’d had them made, and that I’d been encouraged to do so by Jason Epstein, who not only introduced me to the boot maker, but sat with me while I had them designed and fitted. Morrison said: That’s right, my shoes. And it was then that I understood something more about the Krementz pictures (which I didn’t see until last year): portraits are only interesting when the subject can say, simply and complicatedly, but owning it: I.