1992 novel set in 1920s Harlem / TUE 8-13-24 / 1970 novel exploring racism's effect on a young girl's self-esteem / 1981 novel about the interplay of privilege and poverty in a Caribbean romance / 1977 novel whose title references a lyrical Old Testament book / 1973 novel set in "the Bottom," a neighborhood slated to be demolished for a golf course / Covered veranda often equipped with a ceiling fan

Constructor: Benjamin Panico

Relative difficulty: Easy (or Challenging, depending on your familiarity with the puzzle's subject)

THEME: TONI MORRISON (55A: Author who received the Nobel Prize in Literature on the basis of her first six novels, all featured in this puzzle) — six novels by Toni Morrison:

Theme answers:

• JAZZ (8A: 1992 novel set in 1920s Harlem)
• THE BLUEST EYE (19A: 1970 novel exploring racism's effect on a young girl's self-esteem)
• TAR BABY (30A: 1981 novel about the interplay of privilege and poverty in a Caribbean romance)
• SONG OF SOLOMON (35A: 1977 novel whose title references a lyrical Old Testament book)
• BELOVED (42A: 1987 Pulitzer-winning novel about the haunting of a formerly enslaved family's home)
• SULA (65A: 1973 novel set in "the Bottom," a neighborhood slated to be demolished for a golf course)

Word of the Day: TONI MORRISON (55A) —

Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (née Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019), known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist and editor. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

Born and raised in Lorain, Ohio, Morrison graduated from Howard University in 1953 with a B.A. in English. Morrison earned a master's degree in American Literature from Cornell University in 1955. In 1957 she returned to Howard University, was married, and had two children before divorcing in 1964. Morrison became the first black female editor in fiction at Random House in New York City in the late 1960s. She developed her own reputation as an author in the 1970s and '80s. Her novel Beloved was made into a film in 1998. Morrison's works are praised for addressing the harsh consequences of racism in the United States and the Black American experience.

The National Endowment for the Humanities selected Morrison for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities, in 1996. She was honored with the National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters the same year. President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on May 29, 2012. She received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction in 2016. Morrison was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2020. (wikipedia)

• • •

First themer I got was THE BLUEST EYE and I thought, "wow, that's kind of a deep cut for a Tuesday puzzle." And then I got JAZZ and started to think the same thing but then immediately realized "oh, we're just doing TONI MORRISON novels, is that it?" And that was it. It's a list of her first six novels, which just happen to be symmetrically arrangeable in a crossword grid (when you throw Morrison's name in the mix as well). From a puzzle standpoint, this isn't much. It's a list. Here's the author. Here's six books she wrote. There's no wordplay, no tricks. Just titles. And it's not even an anniversary—Morrison's birthday, say (Feb. 18), or the anniversary of her Nobel Prize win, or anything. Just her name and her books. So ... ho-hum. And yet it's really hard for me to be mad at a grid that has one of my very favorite novels splashed right across the middle of it. If you're going to bore me with a list, I'd say this list about as interesting a way as there is to do it. I enjoyed taking the trip through Morrison's back catalogue. As an English major who was in college at the peak of Morrison's productivity and fame (i.e. just after BELOVED came out), these titles all came to me very, very easily. Lots of my friends were Women's Studies majors of one kind or another (English, Sociology, etc.), so I became very familiar with the Morrison bibliography very quickly, and though I've only read two of these books, I filled in every title in today's puzzle without any difficulty at all. Well, there was some difficulty with the first title (THE BLUEST EYE), since at that point I didn't know they would all be Morrison titles. But after the second title (JAZZ) ... whoosh! So I liked this puzzle insofar as I like TONI MORRISON and enjoyed briefly reminiscing about my college days, when she first came to my notice and when I first read her work. And yeah, SONG OF SOLOMON, man. It's a life-changer. A disturbing, even horrifying work, but a warm and wise one as well. And a page-turner! I might pick it up again soon...

There's not much going on today beyond the list of book titles. Those answers are inherently flashy and interesting. The rest of the grid, much less so. The "Z"s gave it some zing, but otherwise, it's pretty routine and unremarkable. It's also very easy—as it would have to be, since for many people there's probably going to be plenty of difficulty in the theme itself, the way there is always difficulty in working out proper nouns you've never heard of. I have no idea how familiar Morrison's catalogue is to the general public. Seems plausible that even very well read people might not know more than one or two titles. So there was no room for the non-thematic fill to get too hard or too cute. Gotta keep those crosses coming in clean so no one gets Naticked. I don't see any potential Naticks today. Only SULA and (to a lesser extent) TAR BABY have any chance of thwarting people with an uninferrable letter, and their crosses all seem clear to me. The "Y" in TAR BABY came from OYS (26D: Pained cries), which could easily have been OWS or even OHS, I suppose, but again, you can get the "Y" by inference, i.e. TARBABW is nonsense. That first "A" in TAR BABY comes from EVA, whose clue is unusual (21D: #bestfriends4___) but ultimately pretty straightforward. I don't see an ounce of difficulty in this puzzle outside the themers. I had some mild trouble working out the awkwardness of RETURN TO (4D: Pick up again, as a book). "Pick up" was ambiguous—I thought I was returning to the library to check it out again, or buying another copy, not simply coming back to it after having put it aside. But this resulted in mild hesitation, not actual confusion or stoppage. I always balk at VLOGS because that word has always seemed made-up and embarrassing, and now seems dated, but again, it's not like it was hard to come up with (43D: YouTube journals, essentially).  Conceptually, this puzzle wasn't particularly innovative or original or clever, but it did provide a welcome opportunity to remember a great author. Maybe that's enough. 

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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