Black Madonna

THE other day on a street near NR’s offices I passed a deranged man who was shouting to himself. “Spanish mackerel?” he demanded. “I didn’t even know there was such a thing as Spanish mackerel!” Then he was gone, and I never learned what had got him onto the subject of that particular fish or what he found so astonishing about it.

Listening to people like that, and hopelessly trying to guess what they’re talking about, is not unlike the experience of plowing through Toni Morrison’s new novel.