CLOSE-UP: HELD STILL

AFTER EIGHTEEN YEARS, Sethe and Paul D, characters in Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel Beloved, are reunited in a house that is haunted by the ghost of Sethe’s infant child. The two of them had been enslaved on a plantation they call Sweet Home, the sort of ironic name that plagued those years. (My great-great-great grandfather, born enslaved in 1836, was named Pleasant.) Paul D has been wandering since he ran away, while Sethe, in the wake of emancipation, has found a home for herself and her only surviving daughter, Denver, though the ghost keeps them isolated. Sethe has invited Paul D, who was

print November 2018

INFINITE VARIETY

IN THE SECOND EPISODE of his short-lived 1977 variety show, Richard Pryor performs a sketch in which he plays the front man for a heavy-metal outfit called Black Death. Before he gets to the stage, the nearly all-white audience, ravenous with anticipation, repeatedly screams in unison, “We want Black Death! We want Black Death!” Pryor’s character—looking like a cross between a member of Kiss and a Muppet—is lowered to the stage from above, his bandmates having already emerged from caskets. He starts in on his performance, consisting of some guitar tricks and screeched, indecipherable