Love’s Critical History as Told by Toni Morrison

Having functioned as a primary source for both Beloved and Paradise, The Black Book provided an equally vital absence in the literary critical history of Morrison’s eighth novel, Love. Jettisoned in 2009, the foreword to The Black Book’s composite record of African American experience, which Morrison solicited from private collectors and coedited, was authored in 1974 by then adored African American comedian/actor Bill Cosby, the odds-on prototype for Love’s Bill Cosey: friend, father, philanthropist, phantom, pedophile, and “ordinary man ripped, like the rest of us, by wrath and love” (Love 200).

As L, the priestly woman in the chef’s hat at pre-integration Cosey’s Hotel and Resort, concludes about her charismatic, deeply flawed employer, “You could call him a good bad man, or a bad good man. Depends on what you hold dear . . .” (200). Likewise, Bill Cosby’s productive career and positive image were irreparably damaged in the mid-2010s amid numerous highly publicized sexual assault allegations, the earliest of which date back decades. More than sixty women have accused him of rape, drug-facilitated sexual assault, sexual battery, sexual misconduct, and child sexual abuse, although the statute of limitations was expired in nearly all claims.

A popular stand-up comic during the 1960s, Cosby acquired a part in I Spy, the first weekly dramatic television series to feature an African American in a starring role, followed by his own sitcom, The Cosby Show, which was ranked America’s number one comedy program from 1984 through 1989. Like Cosey a highly successful, hands-on advocate for family-oriented entertainment, Cosby coproduced the series, retained creative control, and involved himself in all aspects of production. His special interest in educating poor black children akin to Love’s Heed-the-Night Johnson continued with the “Fat Albert” character developed during his stand-up routines. His 1976 doctoral dissertation involved the use of the Saturday-morning cartoon based on his childhood, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, as a teaching tool in elementary schools. Vida Gibbons’s comment about Cosey applies equally to Cosby: “His pleasure was in pleasing” (33).