Scott Horton – A Farewell to Kings

January 5, 2024January 9, 2024 ~ Pulitzer Guy ~ 11 Comments

We are young. Wandering the face of the Earth. Wondering what our dreams might be worth. Learning that we’re only immortal for a limited time.
Dreamline, by Rush

Scott (2nd from right) with his lifelong friend Bill meeting Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson from Rush

My younger brother, Scott Horton, passed away yesterday. We knew it was coming, he was surrounded by family and friends, it was peaceful, and he did it on his terms. I love all of that and I’m doing my best to keep that in mind, but today I can’t help but mourn for the loss of a great father, husband, brother, son, cousin, uncle, friend, neighbor, co-worker, concert-goer, sports enthusiast, artist, traveler, cat-lover, and overall human. (If you want to know why he’s a “Horton” and I’m an “Orta,” buy me a drink and I’ll tell you the story. I promise it will be worth your while.)

Scott and I were born only 20 months apart, so I don’t recall a time when he wasn’t around. Because we were so close in age, our childhood was filled with endless front yard football/basketball/baseball games, cap guns, model airplanes, green plastic army men, comic books and ninja throwing stars. We built bicycle ramps so that we could emulate Evil Knievel, waited in line to see all the Star Wars movies, and had “firework wars” where we would shoot roman candles and bottle rockets at each other. Thankfully, no one was (permanently) injured, but we did knock out a couple of teeth.

Come to think of it, a lot of the activities we did seemed completely normal in the 70s but would probably result in a call to Child Protective Services today. For example, it seemed that every kid in the neighborhood had a BB gun, the most popular choice being the Crossman air rifle that you could manually pump to build up air pressure. More pumps led to more pressure and more pressure led to faster BB velocity. So with that backdrop, we used to have BB gun wars where the rule was that you could only pump your rifle two times. Because we were 10-12 year old boys and said rule was only regulated by the honor system, it was inevitable that someone would get shot, it would hurt, they would scream “THAT WAS MORE THAN TWO PUMPS!” and a smallish scuffle would ensue. Good times.

Yet despite all of the things that we did together, we were polar opposites in many ways. He played the drums (loudly), I played the guitar (badly). (Note that neither of us wanted to play the piano, which was the instrument chosen by our parents.) While I ate whatever was put in front of me, Scott would eat only plain foods and his diet consisted primarily of hamburgers with no condiments, cheese pizza, pasta with no sauce, and grilled cheese sandwiches. (For the record, his taste palate increased significantly once he reached adulthood. Or maybe 30.)

We also could never agree on which sports team to support. He rooted for the Dodgers, while I rooted for the Reds. He rooted for the Dallas Cowboys, while I rooted for the Pittsburgh Steelers. (As an aside, this latter rivalry got so heated mid-game one year that he threw a pen at me tip first like a spear with such uncanny accuracy that it ended up in my ear. Don’t fret, no damage was done other than I flopped more than a Premier League soccer player in the penalty area which I recall resulted in a spanking and timeout for Scott. Sorry about that.) He loved to play hockey – both the ice and rollerblade variety – and I still don’t get it to this day.

And in music, although we found some common ground mainly in the classics (Zeppelin, Stones), our tastes were not generally aligned. When I was listening to punk bands like TSOL, Circle Jerks, Dead Kennedys, Social Distortion and X, Scott loved hard/progressive/jazz rock bands like Night Ranger, Steely Dan, Cheap Trick, Triumph, The Cult and Joe Satriani. But if you know Scott, you will also know that he loved one band above all others – Rush. I cannot stress this enough – he really, really loved Rush.

I will choose a path that’s clear. I will choose free will.
Free Will from Permanent Waves by Rush (1980)

I’ve spent a lot of words here describing what Scott did, but it is a lot harder to describe who Scott was. Quiet individualist comes to mind, but I might be more successful in this endeavor if I simply told you a story that happened long ago, but that I only learned of very recently. The story takes place at church. At least that is what our Dad assumed.

Our mother died when I was 12 and Scott was 10. That is important for this story only because when we went to church on Sunday, Dad was now a single parent and had to play zone rather than man-to-man defense. Scott, recognizing this, began telling our dad that he preferred sitting in the balcony with the choir rather than on the main floor with us. In hindsight, this seems completely unbelievable. Nonetheless, the ruse appeared to work and before mass began, Scott would part ways with us and head up to the balcony. What 10 year old Scott failed to mention but 54 year old Scott fessed up to, however, was that as soon as the service started and we were all now facing forward, he would leave church, walk four blocks (across a major thoroughfare no less) to a local store/deli called AJ’s that served milk shakes and had a couple of video games, and then when he knew mass was ending, he’d head back just in time for the post-church donuts mixer.

When he told me this story – again, only recently – I was stunned, and not because (a) I never knew this story or (b) it seems inconceivable that 10 year olds in 1970s Phoenix could do this every week and not be murdered or have some other bad thing happen to them. No, what stunned me was how smart it was. Scott did the calculus: I hate church, I like video games, and I like donuts. Hence, what clearer path to choose than one he chose? I need to use the decision making framework more often.

Scott at his high school graduation from Brophy College Prep. In the background is the room that had the donut mixers post-church services.

Why are we here? Because we’re here, roll the bones.
Roll the Bones by Rush (1991)

Although we obviously spent a ton of time together early on, as kids are prone to do, we grew up, went to college, settled in different cities, got jobs and had kids. If that wasn’t enough, Scott, the overachiever, got a Ph.D. at the age of 45. We spoke less not for any reason other than life is busy. Then, nearly three years ago, he called to tell me that he was diagnosed with what turned out to be a rare brain cancer.

As crises often do, Scott’s diagnosis reminded us what – and who – is important in your life. From that moment until yesterday, we made the effort to spend a lot more time together. And from that moment until yesterday, I watched Scott battle cancer and battle it well. He had two surgeries, two rounds of radiation, one round of chemo, and countless doctor visits. Through it all, he remained both stoic and hopeful that he would ultimately prevail.

What is even more impressive than how he battled cancer, is how the kid who would walk from church to AJ’s and back for donuts lived his life when the cancer and associated treatments took a pause and he felt better. In the last year and a half alone he traveled to Chicago, New York, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Charleston, Savannah, the UK, Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. He saw the sphere in Vegas and hiked in Zion. We saw The Cult while I was visiting Arizona. His will to live – to really live – consistently amazed me. Unfortunately, as it so often does, the cancer returned in August, and this time, there were no more treatments to be had.

The measure of a life is a measure of love and respect; so hard to earn, so easily burned.
The Garden from Clockwork Angels (2012)

Between Thanksgiving and New Years as Scott’s condition began to worsen, I was lucky enough to spend a significant amount of time with Scott, his wife Carol, and their two incredible sons Deven and Ryan. Their support for Scott, and each other, throughout this ordeal never wavered. It was extraordinary yet I’ve been struggling today to write something that appropriately captured this love without sounding rote. Luckily for me, Deven did a far better job than I could ever do in this Instagram post.

I also got to witness the effect Scott had on the greater world. Every day seemed to bring another string of visitors to wish him well, most of whom I’d never met. Neighbors, co-workers, former students and friends, all came by with stories of how Scott had impacted their own journeys. And of this group, I was most impressed by the friends that he has known for a lifetime.

I’m fairly sociable, but of the people that I currently consider close friends, the earliest are probably from high school and most are people I met later in life. In this way, Scott and I also differ. Of his closest circle of friends, most have known Scott since he was 7 years old or younger. I was trying to figure out why and how this happened, and I think it is because Scott was always Scott. In his office at home, Scott showed me recently how over the years he had collected some of his favorite toys from childhood. At first I thought this was just nostalgia, but upon further reflection there was a simpler explanation: Scott has always known what he liked and who he liked (and who he didn’t like).

And on that note, I’ll end with one more story to bring the point home. I found this book report he did when he was seven years old on Roger Staubach: Running Cowboy. I love this because he only had to answer two questions. First, “Tell what the book was about” to which Scott responded: “But he’s six-four and weighs 250, someone said. What would you do with him in [a] back alley. Listen said Roger, I’ve got four years of hand-to-hand combat I never got to use.” I searched for this book on Amazon, sadly to no avail. Regardless, I’m not totally sure he understood the question, I’m pretty sure that isn’t what the book was about, and I’m 100% sure that I love the fact that Scott thought that this passage was cool.

The second question was a two parter: “Did you like the story?” and “Why?” To which Scott responded: “Yes” and “I like football”. If only he had added “dumbass” to the end.

Nearly 38 years after Scott received an “OK” on this book report, his Ph.D. dissertation titled “High Fidelity Virtual Environments: Does Shader Quality or Higher Polygon Count Models Increase Presence and Learning” was approved and published. Although I’m 100% sure that I don’t understand this paper, it is clear that Scott had come a long way from his “I like football” days. But what is even more telling and touching and apropos is what Scott included on the “Acknowledgement” page:

“As I officially end my time in college and this chapter of my life, while moving on to bigger and better things, I’d like to quote Neal Peart of Rush in saying:

Why try? I know why

The feeling inside me says it’s time I was gone

Clear head, new life ahead

I want to be king now not just one more pawn… “

The last thing I told my brother yesterday was that I loved him and I’m grateful for that. At the risk of taking this Rush thing too far, Scott, I bid you farewell my extraordinary brother, a “Freewill” spirit, we celebrate your “Tom Sawyer” adventures, the “Closer to the Heart” moments that we shared, leaving us with “Time Stand Still” memories. And as you embark on the “Limelight” of eternity, know that you will forever be “The Spirit of the Radio” in our hearts. You were, and always will be, a king.

The Acknowledgements page from Scott’s dissertation (December 2014)

You Say You Want a Resolution

December 31, 2021January 4, 2022 ~ Pulitzer Guy ~ 2 Comments

One of my all-time favorite blog posts is this one by Tim Urban which discusses the passage of time, and in doing so, puts into clear focus the finite aspect of our lives. In particular, he lays out a lifespan not in the usual units of measurement such as minutes or hours or months or years, but instead by activities. For example, a presidential election only happens every four years. Assuming I live to be 90, therefore, I’m only going to punch the presidential ballot about another 10 times. Yikes.

That example, by the way, was intentional. The four-year cycle of presidential elections (or World Cups or Olympic Games) is apropos here at Pulitzer Schmulitzer because it has been just over four years since my last blog post. Another yikes. There are lots of reasons for this unintentional break, but suffice it to say that unlike presidential elections, the frequency of my writing is entirely in my control. And knowing that, I came to the patently obvious conclusion that I’m not going to finish this countdown unless I significantly pick up the pace here.

Why am I thinking about this now? Well, part of it is simply that fact that this is the time of year where “best of” lists abound as we look back on another loop about the sun. (Another part of it is that I had a COVID exposure so am self-isolating on New Year’s Eve and have some time on my hands.) On an individual level, it’s hard not to use this time to take stock of our accomplishments and failures and grade our past twelve months. More importantly, however, the end of the year also gives us an opportunity to think about the year ahead who we’d like to be. Granted, in reality New Year’s Day will just be like any other Saturday in our lives. But it feels different. It feels like we have a chance to close a chapter and start again with a blank slate. And not surprisingly, therefore, it is also time for New Year’s resolutions.

Historically, I’ve never been a huge proponent of either forming or following through on New Year’s resolutions. Part of this is certainly my fault, but most of the time my resolutions were either too vague, too small, too big, too numerous, or really, too stupid. As a result, I often forgot about them or ignored them or simply failed at them after a week or two.

At the start of 2021, however, I adopted an idea that my friend Gillian wrote about a few years back: instead of doing yearlong resolutions, set 12 one month resolutions. This structure helps in a couple of ways. First, you’re more likely to succeed (and success comes much quicker), with this shortened timeframe. Second, if you don’t succeed on any particular goal, you year isn’t shot; you simply start again the following month. So on this, the last day of 2021, here is my look back at my previous twelve months. With grades.

DRY JANUARY

Grade: B

Giving up alcohol in January certainly isn’t a novel idea, but honestly probably was (and probably still is) the most important one for me. The more I read about alcohol, the more I’m convinced that drinking is one of the worst things you can do to your body. The flip side, of course, is that drinking is super fun. (Or, as Kid Cudi put it, “All the crazy shit I did last night / Those will be the best memories”).

But at the start of 2021 we were a year into the pandemic, and if there is one thing I’ve learned from COVID is that pandemics are hard and a break from booze was sorely needed. I wasn’t perfect; I actually started on January 4^th and had two other events that month where I drank, but 5 drinking days out of 31 was my best in a while. A long while.

WRITING FEBRUARY

Grade: F

February was supposed to be the month I kickstarted my writing. Specifically, I wanted to post two Pulitzer Schmultizer blog posts. It was a total fail. That said, the fact that I did set that goal gnawed at me periodically through the year, and may, in fact be another reason why I’m aiming to publish this piece in 2021. (Spoiler alert: I made it.)

READING MARCH

Grade: C

Given that I’m an avid reader, you would think the fact that I spend so much more time at home without a commute would have led to a significant increase in my reading time. You would be wrong. Turns out that the commute itself provides some built in reading time. Removing that time from my schedule also removed a fairly ingrained habit, and I didn’t find a suitable replacement.

So in March 2021, my goal was to read for an hour a day. I gave myself a C, but I consider this one a success; I was just over-zealous on my ambition. An hour a day is simply too much (or is simply too much for me), and I realized this fairly early on. What I also realized, however, was that a half-hour was doable, revised my goal accordingly, and was very successful reading that amount. So maybe a C with an asterisk.

VEGETARIAN APRIL

Grade: A

I love meat. But, like alcohol, the more I read about meat, and in particular the meat industry, the more I’m coming to believe that we’d all be better off as vegetarians. While this has been a slow realization for sure, over the years, I have cut out some specific things from my diet. I haven’t eaten veal in forever, for example. More recently, I decided that I won’t eat any of the top 10 smartest animals. Granted, most of these are fairly easy to avoid, but giving up octopus and, to a much greater extent, pork, has been a sacrifice. As noted above, I love meat and pork is very, very tasty.

Despite my love of meat, however, this one turned out to be relatively easy. My only slip up was a booze-fueled, unintentionally enthusiastic inhaling of a Kentucky Fried Chicken drumstick. (For Pulitzer Schmulitzer fans, you are aware of my weakness for KFC.) I will definitely do this one again.

OUTDOOR MAY

Grade: D

If you asked me at the start of the year which monthly resolution I thought would be the easiest to accomplish, I might have said this one. My goal for the month was simple: do two camping trips and take two hikes. What did I actually do? One hike and one night in a glamping tent at Safari West where I stayed up all night listening to two mating geese. I aspire to improve on this one in 2022.

BEACH BODY JUNE

Grade: A-

The goal for June was straightforward: do at least 30 minutes of exercise every single day. I already exercise a lot so this one wasn’t a huge stretch, but like with my reading, the COVID disruption to my schedule had somewhat surprisingly resulted in me being a little less disciplined with my work out routine. I missed maybe 1 or 2 days during June, but otherwise met this goal and, more importantly, re-established a much healthier routine.

LEARN SOMETHING NEW JULY

Grade: C

In hindsight, this goal – to “learn something new” – was frankly too vague. I did absolutely learn some new things. For example – and this is a little embarrassing – I actually barbecued for the first time in July. I’m not kidding. Not only that, but the grill had seen such little use that it wouldn’t light so I had to learn how to replace the igniter. But that wasn’t really what I had in mind at the start of 2021. In my head my goal for July was something more lofty like to take a course. As such, I gave myself a C with the real lesson here to be more specific with my objectives.

DELETE THE APPS AUGUST

Grade: A

If my reading time decreased during the pandemic, my time on social media increased in equal measure. As such, August’s goal was to delete Facebook, Instagram, Snap and TikTok from my phone. To be clear, I didn’t delete my accounts. But simply by removing them from my phone – especially from the home screen – it required me to be much more thoughtful and intentional about accessing them because it also required me to log in on desktop or through mobile web. This little bit of added friction, believe it or not, totally worked to decrease aimless scrolling and even more importantly the habit of opening them up at any moment of downtime. I loved this one and have never added any of the above back to my home screen.

DO SOME GOOD SEPTEMBER

Grade: F

September was supposed to be the month where I did a volunteer activity every Saturday. Again, like Outdoor May, I went into 2021 assuming that this would be a layup and again failed miserably. Didn’t do one thing. Yes, work was really busy this month, and yes, one Saturday I was actually at my first post-COVID wedding, but I believe I could have done more to make this happen. Of all of my 2021 resolutions, I may be most disappointed by this one.

ARTS OCTOBER

Grade: B+

At the start of 2021, vaccines were just around the corner and I assumed that by October life would be for the most part back to normal. As such, my goal for the month was to experience some of the things that I’ve missed the most these past few years and see one concert, one play, one museum exhibit and one art event of my choice. I was close. I went to two days of Outside Lands (I’m counting that as the concert and the event of my choice), and went to see an Orchestra performance of Anime hits on November 10^th (nothing this elaborate mind you but this was one of the “hits”) and the Art of Banksy exhibit on November 24^th. So technically I didn’t see the play and didn’t do it all in October, but technically COVID didn’t cooperate either because of the Delta variant so screw it, I’m giving myself a B+.

GIVE THANKS FOR YOUR STUFF NOVEMBER

Grade: A-

Similar to booze, the meat industry, and mindless social media consumption, I often struggle with how much stuff I consume. Because November is the time to give thanks, this month’s goal was simply to not buy anything new (food items excluded). Like Vegetarian April and Delete the Apps August, this one turned out to be relatively easy. I had to buy one tie and one dress shirt to wear for a business trip to New York, but other than those purchases I was the non-conspicuous consumer.

REACH OUT DECEMBER

Grade: B-

Last but certainly not least was one of my favorite goals of 2021: make a point to reach out to people that I adore but that I don’t get to see. My original thought was to do one reach out per day, so 31 in total. Ultimately, the reach outs were much more lumpy and I probably ended with about 20 so I’m giving myself a B-. Nonetheless, when I did do it the responses brought me a lot of joy. Makes you wonder why we don’t prioritize this more often. (Also, if you just read this paragraph and are mad that you weren’t one of the 20, don’t be. The other thing that this resolution taught me was that there are so many people that fall into this category. I’ll hit you up in 2022.)

So we’ve reached the end of this post and of 2021. I’ll get this posted right under the wire, and promise that this weekend I will work on my list for 2022. Some of these I will keep forever (Dry January is definitely needed), some I will keep because I failed at them last year (Writing February, Outdoor May and Do Good October), some I will improve on (Learn Something New July), and some I will drop because I don’t need them (Delete the Apps August). But most importantly, I resolve to pay more attention to Pulitzer Schmultizer and make some progress on my countdown. I hope you all keep me accountable.

In the meantime, I’m going to leave you with words from two people much more articulate and wise than I am. Both are about life and understanding that it is very finite. The first piece is from a commencement address the author Joan Didion – who just passed away last week – gave in 1975 at UC Riverside:

“I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”

And the second is a poem called The Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowski:

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

(I love this poem and the only way it would be better would be to watch Tom Waits read it.)

So I made it. It is 11:13 on New Year’s Eve. Wishing you all the best in 2022.

#51 Beloved by Toni Morrison (1988): As Yoda Would Say, Love or Hate. There is No Like. Hmm. (alternate title: I Did Not Love It. Controversy?)

June 5, 2016February 15, 2017 ~ Pulitzer Guy ~ 5 Comments

[Editor’s Note: Pulitzer Schmulitzer! is where we count down our favorite Pulitzer Prize winning novels for fiction according to the unpredictable and arbitrary whims of yours truly. To learn how Pulitzer Schmulitzer! started and read about the methodology or complete lack thereof behind the rankings, look no further than right here. If you want to see what we’ve covered so far, here you go. Now, on to the countdown.]

There was a busy and sad news week in April – led by the death of Prince – where you might have missed the fact that the US Treasury Department decided your wallet has too much testosterone so they’re booting Andrew Jackson off the $20 bill and replacing him with Harriet Tubman. If your third grade history class is a little fuzzy, Tubman was one of the most important figures in the movement to end slavery. Now, not only is she the first woman to appear on US currency in more than a century, but she is also the first African-American ever to appear. And Andrew Jackson, the man she is replacing, owned slaves. Karma’s a bitch.

What you might have also missed if you were endlessly looping every Prince album from 1980’s Dirty Mind through 1987’s Sign o’ the Times (which, if you haven’t done, then you should right now), was that the original plan wasn’t to replace Jackson, but rather to replace Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill. That’s not happening anymore because, well, Hamilton. Controversy? Not really.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Hamilton is the Lin-Manuel Miranda written Broadway phenomenon; an unlikely sounding hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton, one of the lesser-known founding fathers of America. The numbers are staggering. After a successful off-Broadway run, it took in over $60 million before it opened on Broadway in August 2015; it’s sold out through January 2017; the album, which reached number three in the rap charts, is the highest selling cast recording for 50 years; tickets for even Monday evening shows can fetch up to $2000 for the best seats; and it just collected a record-breaking 16 Tony Award nominations.

But Hamilton is more than just numbers. It has been called historic and game-changing and, honestly, everyone seems to agree. Hollywood stars, hip-hop royalty and politicians of every persuasion have turned out in droves to see it. President Obama took his daughters, Bill Clinton has seen it, as has Julia Roberts, Susan Sarandon and Madonna (though she, according to cast members, spent most of her time glued to her phone). Jay-Z and Beyoncé posed with the cast after the show. One night JJ Abrams, the director of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, came and asked Manuel to write music for a scene in the film.

But its not just famous people that love Hamilton. Little kids love Hamilton and make cute little kid YouTube videos. Finicky critics love Hamilton. Ben Brantley, the New York Times critic, wrote, “I am loath to tell people to mortgage their houses and lease their children to acquire tickets to a hit musical. But Hamilton… might just be about worth it.” And even more finicky (finickier?) and sometimes hard to please teens love the show. How do I know? Because I’ve got one.

My daughter Lily started listening to the Hamilton soundtrack right before Christmas. I’m not entirely sure what the impetus was to make her queue it up on Spotify, but I am sure that once she started listening to it she couldn’t stop. Within a fairly short period of time, she knew every word to every song. She knew every cast member, including ensemble cast members and backups. She even enlisted her little sister to accompany her in a cute little video.

Which brings me to Beloved from Toni Morrison, the 1988 Pulitzer Prize winner and probably the most controversial novel on the countdown. Just as Frank Bascombe from Independence Day was the anti-Lemmy Kilmister, Beloved is the anti-Hamilton. People love or hate this book in equal numbers.

Set in Ohio in 1873 after the end of the Civil War, Beloved tells a lot of stories with a lot of voices, but the central one belongs to Sethe who is living in a farmhouse with her youngest daughter Denver, and her mother-in-law Baby Suggs. There is almost no way to explain this book without giving away the plot (ergo, SPOILER ALERT), but their house is also home to a sad but very angry ghost, who everyone believes is the spirit of Sethe’s baby daughter, who, at the age of 2, had her throat cut under appalling circumstances. We never know this child’s full name, but we – and Sethe – think of her as Beloved, because that is what is on her tombstone. Sethe wanted ”Dearly Beloved,” from the funeral service, but had only enough strength to pay for one word. Payment was 10 minutes of sex with the tombstone engraver.

Not surprisingly, a haunted house doesn’t make for the greatest home environment. Sethe’s two young sons have run away from home by the age of 13, and Denver, the only child remaining, is shy, friendless, and housebound. To add insult to injury, not long into the book and with the ghost in full possession of the house, Baby Suggs dies in her bed. Insert sad emoji.

But characters – and stories – such as these don’t exist without some significant trauma in their past, and Sethe’s past comes front and center when Paul D – one of the slaves from Sweet Home, the Kentucky plantation where Baby Suggs, Sethe, Halle (Sethe’s ex), and several other slaves once worked – arrives at their home. They fled Sweet Home 18 years before the novel opens, and when we begin the flashbacks, we see why. If there is such a thing as a good slave owner, then Mr. Garner, the original owner of Sweet Home, might qualify. He treated the slaves well, allowed them some say in running the plantation, and called them ”men” in defiance of the neighbors, who want all male blacks to be called ”boys.” But when he dies, his wife brings in her handiest male relative, who is known as ”the schoolteacher,” and, as is often the case with people whose nickname is “the schoolteacher,” he is a total asshole.

Throw in the schoolteacher’s two sadistic and repulsive nephews, and from there it’s all downhill at Sweet Home as the slaves try to escape, go crazy or are murdered. Sethe, in a trek that makes the Snake’s journey in Escape from New York look like a stroll around the block, gets out, just barely; her husband, Halle, doesn’t. Paul D. does, but has some very unpleasant adventures along the way, including a literally nauseating sojourn in a 19th-century Georgia chain gang.

So Paul D. and a shit ton of baggage arrive at Sethe’s home, and surprisingly, he appears to make things a little better. He forces out the ghost, and even gets Denver out of the house for the first time in years. But never forget, this is a Pulitzer winner which means that, chances are, this isn’t a story where things are going to work out for everyone in the end. And sure enough, on the way back home with Denver, they come across a young woman sitting in front of the house, calling herself, of all things, Beloved. Paul D is suspicious (duh) and warns Sethe, but she is charmed by the young woman and ignores him.

Not surprisingly, inviting a random 20 year-old who shows up out of nowhere calling herself the same name as your baby daughter who died tragically turns out to be a poor decision. Beloved gets in everyone’s head and sooner or later has sex with Paul D in a shed. He feels horrible and is racked with guilt, but when he tries to tell Sethe about it he instead tells her that he wants her pregnant. Lesson: just no.

Albeit, Sethe is initially elated so, to be fair, Paul D’s ad lib does put the breakup playlist on hold for a few. But when Paul D tells his friends at work about his plan to start a new family, they tell him the real story of how Sethe’s two year old died. I’ve given away too much already (and honestly would rather not discuss it), but suffice it to say that the news is too much for Paul D and he leaves. Without him around, Beloved consumes more and more of Sethe’s life until it reaches the point where it is clear that both cannot survive.

As I mentioned at the outset, people’s opinions on this novel vary widely. But regardless of where you think this book should sit in our literary countdown, there is little disputing that both the story and the writing are somewhat painful to get through, although I have a much harder time with the latter than the former.

Stories about slavery, especially good stories, are hard to read. On purpose. It was a brutal and lamentable part of our nation’s history, when very specific (and horrific) things happened to actual human beings. And being a book about that period, Beloved describes all of the beatings, whippings, rapes, killings, all of the families torn apart, individuals humiliated and lives wasted. As it should. And that may make the novel hard to read for some, but that isn’t a valid critique of the book.

For me, what made this book difficult to read wasn’t the story, it was the presentation. I’ll give you one example:

“In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don’t love your eyes; they’d just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face ’cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it, you! And no, they ain’t in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don’t love your mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I’m talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved.”

Look, Toni Morrison is a much much much (I could go on for a while) more talented writer than I am, so I’m sure many people will completely disagree with me, but I find passages like the above hard to read. And not in a good way. It is a little over the top. A little Faulkner-esqe (and we see where that got him on the countdown). A little too, well, much. As I read this book, I kept feeling that she was trying too hard to impress and that the story therefore suffered a teeny bit because of it (IMHO).

But regardless of the prose, I admire Beloved for what it aims to achieve: to make us remember a terrible part of American history. And by remember, I don’t mean in a generic “there was slavery in the United States” way, but instead that there were very specific (and horrific) things that happened to actual people. With many wide scale events such as war, racism, or the holocaust, it is easy to get lost in the numbers, to forget that individual people were affected or perished. Beloved personalizes slavery, which makes it easier for people-in-general to identify with the subject. It elevates a terrible part of history beyond mere statistics.

And maybe that’s where Beloved and Hamilton share a common bond. We all learn about the War for Independence in school but in our heart of hearts, we don’t care. We aren’t really moved by it. Hamilton changes that because it shows us a period in history through the story of a single, albeit sometimes unsympathetic, man. Just as we really feel the horrors of slavery because of how we see it affected Sethe, we understand the sacrifices people made when establishing this country.

But, and this is a big but, delivery matters. Beloved will never be universally beloved because Morrison loses the reader (or at least some readers) with her challenging writing. There are no little kids making videos recreating scenes from Beloved. Miranda, in contrast, engages a whole new generation of people with his never-before-heard all-rap Broadway musical. Its accessibility enables the story. Hence that’s why Alexander Hamilton will remain on the ten-dollar bill while slave owner Andrew Jackson gets the boot.

Oddly enough, the very same week that equally universally beloved Prince died, I found myself at the Richard Rogers Theater in New York with Lily watching Lin-Manuel Miranda do his stuff. To tell the truth, I was a little concerned that there was no way the play could live up to the hype. I shouldn’t have been. I loved it. No controversy there.

Lily and Daveed — Lily’s selfie with Lafayette/Jefferson actor Daveed Diggs after the show.