Flannery O'Connor, Hermit Novelist (review)
seems inclined to complicate, if not resist. Class and gender issues appear in Bouson's analysis, but largely as subsidiaries of the master category of race, and to describe Morrison's "aesthetic mastery" as emerging solely out of a desire to contain or manage racial shame seems a bit simplistic. In her insistence on a single-issue "skeleton key" to the novels, then, Bouson seems willing to bypass a good deal of the complexity of Morrison's work for the sake of the theory. At one point in her discussion of Jazz, Bouson cites the novel's self-criticism of its portrait of Golden Gray: "How could I have imagined him so poorly? Not noticed the hurt that was not linked to the color of his skin [. . .]." Though Quiet As It's Kept has its strengths, some readers may wish Bouson had lingered over this question.