On March 24 at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, The Nation Institute sponsored a conversation between Toni Morrison, recipient of the 1993 Nobel Prize, member of The Nation's editorial advisory board and author of Love, Beloved, Paradise, Jazz and The Bluest Eye, among other books, and Cornel West, professor of religion and African-American studies at Princeton, Nation contributor and author of Race Matters and many other books and articles. In his introductory remarks, Institute president Hamilton Fish noted that "tonight, we continue a conversation that began in 1865, the year a group of Northern abolitionists published the first issue of The Nation magazine." Following is an abridged and adapted version of that conversation; you can watch and listen to the entire conversation via a link at www.thenation.com.   --The Editors

CORNEL WEST: We want to begin just by raising the general query of how you would characterize our historical moment.

TONI MORRISON: I feel two things at the same time: terrified and melancholy, and I think in both domestic and foreign affairs it's frightening--the altercations, the agenda. There have been other frightening moments, but the melancholy that I feel now is about a country like this with the best shot in the world, that a country like this with a certain kind of plenitude and intelligence and ambition and generosity and some history from which to learn, could, indeed, throw it all away and become the worst parts of its own self.

Cornel, I see you sitting here nodding and frowning, but what is curious to me is that whenever I read you, as well as talk to you, and as clearsighted as you are and as aware as you are of these difficulties, you always seem to be something I used to be but no longer am, optimistic. And since I'm rapidly losing that quality, maybe just because of age, I wanted to ask you why.

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