The Immersion Library

By and by all trace is gone, and what is forgotten is not only the footprints but the water too and what it is down there. The rest is weather. Not the breath of the disremembered and unaccounted for, but wind in the eaves, or spring ice thawing too quickly. Just weather. Certainly no clamor for a kiss.

I can’t overstate it. Beloved is the most beautifully grotesque, most loving horror story I’ve ever read. The most truth in fiction.

I felt like Morrison gently held my hand while leading me to a slightly ajar door behind which lived an unholy monster. Yet with each step I took I felt her care, her warmth, and her beauty envolope me like a swaddling cloth. I could hear the monsters grumblings, its screams. I never felt prepared to open the door, only secure in Morrison’s tender countenance.

I will never forget what I found behind that door; nor the expression on my face as I turned to Morrison, whose eyes gently seared my brain. Behind the door, I saw an abominable, mutilated reality. I saw love and suffering mutated and intertwined; laid bare like a formless mass. I asked myself, “What symbol can compete with this? What symbol can make a bigger impact than this?” Morrison lightly caressed my neck as I wrestled with the idea of a reality so heinus as to render any implausible symbol believable.

I saw love destroying evil; along with those under evil’s yoke. I saw people sacrifice themselves in order to save themselves. I saw souls exhumed from skin graves; those graves mangled by oppression and an incalculable yearning.

I can’t forget it. We can’t forget it.

Beloved exemplifies literary art. Like a prose-poem, Morrison unfolds her tale. Rather than a traditional style with a linear narrative, she moves seamlessly through different times, places and perspectives. It seems more like walking through an art gallery in which one ponders the various pieces on the wall, in whatever order attracts them, and finally come to an almost indescribabe sense of essence rather than story, feeling rather than events, truth rather than fiction. A perfect blend of showing through telling.

After she gently closes the door to hell, she asks me, “So what now?”

“It’s not just weather,” I reply. “I won’t forget.”

“Thank you.”