Sometimes you are glad to be proven wrong after you have written a post.
This morning I read on NJ.com that Pulitizer Prize winning author Toni Morrison addressed an overflow crowd as part of a writer's series on the Rutgers University-Newark campus.
Professor Morrison, who read from a stack of typewritten pages that will be part of a new book, addressed a packed house of 600 people. Another 150 watched via a TV monitor in another room nearby.
In a previous post I had asked who would be a larger draw, the event being equal, Toni Morrison or Snooki of the television show Jersey Shore. Snooki supposedly did two shows at Rutgers main campus that drew 2,000 people. However, I was also informed that only about 500 showed at one of them.
But I also said that Toni Morrison was noted long before Snooki was born and that her writing will be remembered long after the last episode of Jersey Shore has gone off the air.
On one score, audience size, I was glad to be proven wrong. Morrison drew an impressive crowd, as do other writers, such as Junot Diaz, who have previously participated in writer's talks at Rutgers-Newark. I could only believe that a main campus audience would be larger and fill a larger room. And that the audience, including students, would remember her more than Snooki. You don't need to be an English major to appreciate great writing.
On the other score, respect for the speaker, I was glad to be proven right. The news coverage of Snooki's appearance at Rutgers drew critical comments about the university and its students, many undeserved. A person's individual decisions to attend an event should not be a basis for judging their intellect. The coverage of Toni Morrison's appearance last night, by contrast, was quite positive.
Morrison, who will be paid $30,000 to be the university's commencement speaker through a corporate contribution by PepsiCo, was given a $2,000 honorarium to speak yesterday. Half the honorarium was paid by the university’s "Writers at Newark" program. The rest was paid by Rutgers’ Institute on Ethnicity, Culture and the Modern Experience.
It appears that Morrison gave them more than their money's worth last night.
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