Song of Solomon Says a Lot About Something…And It’s Funny

One of my favorite shows of all time, The Boondocks, crosses the line way too much in terms of humor. Jokes vary from shootouts and robberies performed by cartoon black kids to making fun of people for voting for Obama because he’s black. It features a mainly privileged African American cast and does a great job of using satire to poke fun at modern issues in the black community. Not to mention its frequent use of the dreaded N-word. It cracks my shit up. 

The first five or so chapters of Song of Solomon caught my attention for these very same things I enjoyed (and continue to enjoy) in The Boondocks. I genuinely found this book, written over 40 years ago, hilarious. At first. I’m not sure if the decrease in humor was intentional or if the initial humor was just unintentional, but either way, I wasn’t laughing by the time the actual plot set in motion. Maybe it was because the book was delving into serious topics for serious people, in which case I should’ve bowed my head at the door as a non-serious person interested in non-serious topics. 

Toni Morrison’s exploration of thematic topics is really hard to follow as a non-close reader and non-serious person, but I did my best to understand the themes she was trying to discuss. Immediately I understood the feelings of dissociation with reality and with society, Milkman’s struggle to find his identity in a world full of people telling him different things. Milkman’s flimsy personality—his flimsy identity—was evident. Other than this, however, I had a really tough time trying to understand what Morrison was trying to say. Does she simply want to give a fictional yet accurate recount of African American life in the 1900s? I doubt it would be that simple, no writer’s aim is only to stay in the literal realm. Did she want to draw attention to the unfair treatment of women in relationships? I mean yeah, Milkman was a pretty shitty dude but I doubt something basic like treating women right is what Morrison wants me to understand. Maybe it’s about racism. Lol no, that’s too easy of an answer.

I think the most profound inkling I received from this book was the message of anti-materialism. Throughout the novel characters find things they love and become married to different ideas or feelings that are weak and without true meaning. Well, kind of. I mean Macon loves being a greedy bastard but he doesn’t have a problem with being one. His trouble comes from his horny wife, which is a different problem altogether. 

Anyway, back to my original narrative (I’m moving in a circle…this is called a circular narrative. like the one employed in Song of Solomon. Get it? I’m sensing a bonus point opportunity) about the Boondocks. The humor in that show is so funny, and Song of Solomon’s initial chapters reminded me of it. In the spirit of making me laugh, I went through and saved all my favorite lines from the beginning of the novel, you know, when it was actually funny and not about history racism relationships love and greed. 

• “Freddie, however, interpreted her look as simple shame, but that didn’t stop him from grinning. Have mercy. I be damn.” So Ruth gets caught being super horny with her way-too-old son and yeah, it’s hilarious. Not only the act she gets caught in, breastfeeding her four year old son, but Freddie’s reaction. It’s like he doesn’t know if he should be turned on or reporting her to the authorities.
• “I want to fuck! Send me up somebody to fuck! Hear me? Send me up somebody, I tell ya, or I’ma blow my brains out!” There are many different ways to turn a woman on: you can meet the love of your life and subsequently fuck the love of your life, you can pay a prostitute, or maybe just do a one night thing. Hell, you can even look for a fuck buddy. Threatening to kill yourself is probably the most desperate of these choices, but I respect the lengths at which Porter is willing to go just to tap some ass. 
• “Do it have to be a woman? Do it got to be human? Do it got to be alive?” Pretty self explanatory, Porter is so drunk that the people around his home are trying to get him to fuck whatever they can instead of an actual woman. In doing so they hit all the different sins one can commit: homosexuality, bestiality, even necrophilia. Interestingly homosexuality is okay now, with bestiality on the rise too. Maybe these people were on to something.
• “And you, you baby-dicked baboon!” Just a classic small dick joke. 
• “General Lee was all right by me…Finest general I even knew. Even his balls was tasty.” Okay literally what the fuck. I don’t know if I’m missing the context with poor comprehension but it sounds to me like Macon is making the case that General Lee has tasty balls, a hot-take I was never expecting to hear from a black man about a confederate army general.
• “Milkman was twenty-two then and since he had been fucking for six years, some of them with the same woman, he’d begun to see his mother in a new light.” Making the reason Milkman see his mom in a new light about him having sex with various women and not about him growing up is so funny. 
• “Sleeping with Hagar had made him generous. Or so he thought. Wide-spirited. Or so he imagined.” It’s just post-nut clarity, bro. 
• “I ended up telling him that nothing could be nastier than delivering his own daughter’s baby.” A conversation that I’m sure was not awkward in the slightest and definitely shouldn’t be a conversation. I may be wrong here but I’m pretty sure delivering your own daughter’s baby would be pretty weird. Maybe.
• “And she had his fingers in her mouth.” Yeah okay what the fuck.
• “He hit her. I hit him. That’s tough.” Yeah bro I beat the shit out of my dad, but he started it. Bro… that’s sick. Let me know next time he swings first so I can join you, sounds like a great fuckin’ time.