Aesthetic Criteria Used In John Leonard's Review

The aesthetic criteria used in John Leonard’s review places an interest in form and content of the novel. Leonard’s criteria seems unafraid of reading for otherness and valuing the feeling of being overwhelmed at the end. In other words, Leonard seems to embrace contamination. Similar to Frankel, Leonard sees meaning in the poetic language, however Leonard values it because of the awareness it gives to the reader. Since Leonard is able to brave feeling contaminated while reading, he mentions that “Morrison’s angry sadness overwhelms,” and this demonstrates his reading for otherness, or looking for the blind spots that occur around racism in the novel. By looking out for the blind spots around racism in the novel, Leonard gives himself the opportunity to break down the consequences of what the characters assume to be racism instead of
Leonard is still able to find some sort of hope even after his willingness to be contaminated and this is shown by the quote he adds to his review in which the old black women in the novel are able to be free from racism because of their old age, and allows Leonard to see that there is still a way out of racism and its consequences. Since Leonard places importance on the why and how of the consequences of contaminated listening, he is able to be free from being concerned about being contaminated in the first place. Frankel is also unconcerned about contaminated listening, but this is because he avoids contamination by choosing to focus only on the beautiful, poetic language of the novel.
In Black Matters, Toni Morrison gives life to the idea of Africanism as the configuration of blackness to define whiteness and in turn Americanism or even just being