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Erasure
Thelonious (Monk) Ellison has never allowed race to define his identity. But as both a writer and an African American, he is offended and angered by the success of We's Lives in Da Ghetto, the exploitative debut novel of a young, middle-class black woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days." Hailed as an authentic representation of the African American experience, the book is a national bestseller and its author feted on the Kenya Dunston television show. The book's success rankles all the more as Monk's own most recent novel has just notched its seventh rejection.
Even as his career as a writer appears to have stalled, Monk finds himself coping with changes in his personal life. In need of distraction from old memories, new responsibilities, and his professional stagnation, Monk composes, in a heat of inspiration and energy, a fierce parody of the sort of exploitative, ghetto wanna-be lit represented by We's Lives in Da Ghetto.
But when his agent sends this literary indictment (included here in its entirety) out to publishers, it is greeted as an authentic new voice of black America. Monk -- or his pseudonymous alter ego, Stagg R. Leigh -- is offered money, fame, success beyond anything he has known. And as demand begins to build for meetings with and appearances by Leigh, Monk is faced with a whole new set of problems.
Even as his career as a writer appears to have stalled, Monk finds himself coping with changes in his personal life. In need of distraction from old memories, new responsibilities, and his professional stagnation, Monk composes, in a heat of inspiration and energy, a fierce parody of the sort of exploitative, ghetto wanna-be lit represented by We's Lives in Da Ghetto.
But when his agent sends this literary indictment (included here in its entirety) out to publishers, it is greeted as an authentic new voice of black America. Monk -- or his pseudonymous alter ego, Stagg R. Leigh -- is offered money, fame, success beyond anything he has known. And as demand begins to build for meetings with and appearances by Leigh, Monk is faced with a whole new set of problems.
280 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
About the author
Percival Everett
69 books3,696 followersPercival L. Everett (born 1956) is an American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.
There might not be a more fertile mind in American fiction today than Everett’s. In 22 years, he has written 19 books, including a farcical Western, a savage satire of the publishing industry, a children’s story spoofing counting books, retellings of the Greek myths of Medea and Dionysus, and a philosophical tract narrated by a four-year-old.
The Washington Post has called Everett “one of the most adventurously experimental of modern American novelists.” And according to The Boston Globe, “He’s literature’s NASCAR champion, going flat out, narrowly avoiding one seemingly inevitable crash only to steer straight for the next.”
Everett, who teaches courses in creative writing, American studies and critical theory, says he writes about what interests him, which explains his prolific output and the range of subjects he has tackled. He also describes himself as a demanding teacher who learns from his students as much as they learn from him.
Everett’s writing has earned him the PEN USA 2006 Literary Award (for his 2005 novel, Wounded), the Academy Award for Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (for his 2001 novel, Erasure), the PEN/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature (for his 1996 story collection, Big Picture) and the New American Writing Award (for his 1990 novel, Zulus). He has served as a judge for, among others, the 1997 National Book Award for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1991.
There might not be a more fertile mind in American fiction today than Everett’s. In 22 years, he has written 19 books, including a farcical Western, a savage satire of the publishing industry, a children’s story spoofing counting books, retellings of the Greek myths of Medea and Dionysus, and a philosophical tract narrated by a four-year-old.
The Washington Post has called Everett “one of the most adventurously experimental of modern American novelists.” And according to The Boston Globe, “He’s literature’s NASCAR champion, going flat out, narrowly avoiding one seemingly inevitable crash only to steer straight for the next.”
Everett, who teaches courses in creative writing, American studies and critical theory, says he writes about what interests him, which explains his prolific output and the range of subjects he has tackled. He also describes himself as a demanding teacher who learns from his students as much as they learn from him.
Everett’s writing has earned him the PEN USA 2006 Literary Award (for his 2005 novel, Wounded), the Academy Award for Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (for his 2001 novel, Erasure), the PEN/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature (for his 1996 story collection, Big Picture) and the New American Writing Award (for his 1990 novel, Zulus). He has served as a judge for, among others, the 1997 National Book Award for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1991.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,304 reviews
January 8, 2021
On Not Fitting In
Racism is, of course, one of a large family of cultural behaviours which includes misogyny, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia, among many others. We are told by sociologists that these behaviours are in some sense ‘normal’ because we have a natural human preference for those who are like ourselves. Folk have a right to value what they know and feel familiar with, politicians say. Because such preferences are instinctive, there is really no way to inhibit them, lawyers chime in. Victims shouldn’t take them personally, contend the perpetrators; such behaviour is the consequence of multi-cultural society and must be tolerated. Corporate marketers are just glad they have something on which to hang their promotions.
Bullshit. If preferences were a function of values, they can be exercised freely and without fanfare in most modern societies. The driving force of these behaviours is not any positive value but negative fear. The instinct involved is not group solidarity but the terror of uncertainty. Prejudice is not an expression of culture, it is an attack on possibility that all culture is relative. Every form of prejudice is a statement of veiled doubt about ‘truths’ that one prefers not to examine too closely: Christianity as the religion of love; democracy as the rule of the people; civilisation as a European invention; patriotism as a virtue*... or being black demands writing ‘black books.’
But there is much bigger and more general fear, a fear that is so terrifying that it has not be given a proper name. This is the fear of difference per se, a fear of that which does not conform to any categorisation, even of existing prejudices. Someone who is neither white nor black, religious nor atheist, male nor female is a threat simply because they cannot be placed and dealt with through the logic of prejudice. These are the existential non-conformists (I get the paradox of naming them as such, so eat this term before reading). They may be political but they would never join a political party. Whatever they do to make a living never becomes their self-identity. Those they associate with they treat civilly but not as friends.
Society erases these people from its collective consciousness (but not its unconsciousness, in which social anxiety without a name grows). They have no status whatsoever; they are non-persons. Nonetheless they have identifying characteristics: they are uncomfortable with cocktail party chat; they mistrust all institutions and their most enthusiastic promoters; and although they are often fluent in the professional vocabulary and speech patterns of the moment, they don’t believe any of it. This last makes them particularly dangerous because it suggests that they are effectively fifth-columnists, deep cover agents of some unknown but dangerous alien presence.
On the other hand, no one ever went broke overestimating the aesthetic of fear in the market. The existential non-conformist, therefore, has a real problem: Is there such a category as ‘fake authenticity?’ Perhaps. But being neither entirely in nor entirely out is sure to cause immense fear among those who want certainty. Call it ‘adaptive irony.’... And then forget you ever heard about it.
* Only after having written this did I realise the influence of Ursula Le Guin in The Left Hand of Darkness : "No, I don't mean love, when I say patriotism. I mean fear. The fear of the other. And its expressions are political, not poetical: hate, rivalry, aggression. It grows in us, that fear. It grows in us year by year." Isn’t the subtlety by which we develop our views incredible?
Racism is, of course, one of a large family of cultural behaviours which includes misogyny, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia, among many others. We are told by sociologists that these behaviours are in some sense ‘normal’ because we have a natural human preference for those who are like ourselves. Folk have a right to value what they know and feel familiar with, politicians say. Because such preferences are instinctive, there is really no way to inhibit them, lawyers chime in. Victims shouldn’t take them personally, contend the perpetrators; such behaviour is the consequence of multi-cultural society and must be tolerated. Corporate marketers are just glad they have something on which to hang their promotions.
Bullshit. If preferences were a function of values, they can be exercised freely and without fanfare in most modern societies. The driving force of these behaviours is not any positive value but negative fear. The instinct involved is not group solidarity but the terror of uncertainty. Prejudice is not an expression of culture, it is an attack on possibility that all culture is relative. Every form of prejudice is a statement of veiled doubt about ‘truths’ that one prefers not to examine too closely: Christianity as the religion of love; democracy as the rule of the people; civilisation as a European invention; patriotism as a virtue*... or being black demands writing ‘black books.’
But there is much bigger and more general fear, a fear that is so terrifying that it has not be given a proper name. This is the fear of difference per se, a fear of that which does not conform to any categorisation, even of existing prejudices. Someone who is neither white nor black, religious nor atheist, male nor female is a threat simply because they cannot be placed and dealt with through the logic of prejudice. These are the existential non-conformists (I get the paradox of naming them as such, so eat this term before reading). They may be political but they would never join a political party. Whatever they do to make a living never becomes their self-identity. Those they associate with they treat civilly but not as friends.
Society erases these people from its collective consciousness (but not its unconsciousness, in which social anxiety without a name grows). They have no status whatsoever; they are non-persons. Nonetheless they have identifying characteristics: they are uncomfortable with cocktail party chat; they mistrust all institutions and their most enthusiastic promoters; and although they are often fluent in the professional vocabulary and speech patterns of the moment, they don’t believe any of it. This last makes them particularly dangerous because it suggests that they are effectively fifth-columnists, deep cover agents of some unknown but dangerous alien presence.
On the other hand, no one ever went broke overestimating the aesthetic of fear in the market. The existential non-conformist, therefore, has a real problem: Is there such a category as ‘fake authenticity?’ Perhaps. But being neither entirely in nor entirely out is sure to cause immense fear among those who want certainty. Call it ‘adaptive irony.’... And then forget you ever heard about it.
* Only after having written this did I realise the influence of Ursula Le Guin in The Left Hand of Darkness : "No, I don't mean love, when I say patriotism. I mean fear. The fear of the other. And its expressions are political, not poetical: hate, rivalry, aggression. It grows in us, that fear. It grows in us year by year." Isn’t the subtlety by which we develop our views incredible?
March 8, 2024
NONSOLONERO
Marco Rossari, che ha tradotto quattro dei cinque romanzi di Everett pubblicati in Italia, scrive quanto segue:
Provate a immaginare uno scrittore nero e benestante che – invece di scrivere storie farcite di slang ambientate nel ghetto – si dedica a riscritture postmoderne di classici greci. Un giorno, a corto di soldi e inviperito per l’ennesimo successo televisivamente corretto del romanzo nero sottoproletario e sboccato, decide di scrivere una parodia in quello stile, intitolandola Cazzo (la parola più ricorrente). Provate a immaginare lo scrittore che propone al proprio esterrefatto agente di venderlo agli editori come l’esplosivo esordio di un ex galeotto nigger incazzato e l’ulteriore stupore dell’agente quando il romanzo riceve un’offerta milionaria e balza in cima alle vendite, finendo in corsa al premio letterario dove in giuria si trova proprio il Nostro. Sarà dura convincere i giurati che quella è una porcata scritta in un fine settimana per mostrare come, alla narrativa afro-americana, sia necessaria una cancellazione, opposta e complementare all’invisibilità dell’uomo di Ralph Ellison.
Il colore della mia pelle è marrone scuro, ho i capelli ricci e il naso largo, alcuni dei miei antenati erano schiavi e mi è capitato di essere trattenuto da certi poliziotti palliducci in New Hampshire, Arizona e Georgia, quindi la società in cui vivo mi dice che sono nero, che questa è la mia razza.
Ma questa è solo una delle chiavi di lettura.
Oppure, solo una delle storie che si leggono in queste pagine. Uno dei romanzi qui raccolti: perché a volte ho avuto la sensazione che si trattasse di una storia nella storia di una storia. Meta-fiction?
Per esempio, altrettanto importante mi pare la storia familiare di questo scrittore, che si chiama Thelonius Ellison, ma per tutti è Monk, e per sua madre Monksie: il padre suicida sette anni fa, la madre di giorno in giorno sempre più vittima dell’Alzheimer, la sorella maggiore ginecologa in una clinica di trincea assediata dagli antiabortisti, e il fratello maggiore che decide di vivere la sua omosessualità nonostante abbia moglie e figli, ma tutti hanno sempre sospettato che fosse gay.
E a un certo punto da una scatola di latta emerge un segreto che probabilmente è meglio leggere.
Il nostro scrittore lascia la costa ovest dove vive per raggiungere Washington e prendersi cura della mamma, e anche della badante della mamma alla quale assicura un futuro agiato: perché con il libraccio da “nigger” che ha scritto per protestare contro tutti gli stereotipi della letteratura dei neri d’America, stereotipi di chi scrive e di chi legge, come se essere nero volesse dire solo ed esclusivamente povertà ignoranza promiscuità slang droga violenza galera, come se invece non avessero avuto il primo presidente degli Stati Uniti d’America di colore nero (mentre quello di sesso femminile lo stanno ancora cercando) che era bello intelligente e con voce sexy proprio come JFK.
Con quel libraccio guadagna bei gruzzoli, trecentomila dollari d’anticipo sulla pubblicazione e tre milioni per i diritti cinema, e può permettersi di badare alla badante della mamma e alla stessa mamma senza doversi preoccupare d’accettare un merdoso incarico d’insegnante a tempo in un qualche scrauso college dell’est.
E poi c’è il romanzaccio condito di turpiloquio e annaffiato di volgarità che sbanca il botteghino: Percival Everett lo riporta tutto, versione integrale.
E poi ci sono spezzoni di conversazioni tra artisti famosi, Klee, Rothko, Wittgenstein, Derrida, dialoghi immaginari che sembrano appunti per futura scrittura, taccuini letterari.
E ci sono anche brevi racconti sulla pesca e sulla falegnameria, i due hobby preferiti dal nostro scrittore protagonista.
E mentre fa tutto questo, Percival Everett spara bordate contro l’archetipo culturale della negritudine, la retorica del ghetto, l’immagine stereotipata che il mondo letterario, televisivo e cinematografico ha della cultura afroamericana.
E tutto quanto è scritto con ironia a tratti esilarante, con intelligenza, ed eleganza, profondità, e potenza, tocca il grottesco ma lo fa, mi viene da dire, con poesia, con finezza.
Un libro ricco, stratificato, mai freddo e mai banale, che non rinuncia al sentimento e si legge con grande facilità.
E da qui comincia la mia conoscenza con questo scrittore.
E adesso c’è il film che ha impiegato oltre vent’anni prima d’essere realizzato (il libro è uscito nel 2001, il film nel 2023). Lo firma un regista afroamericano che si chiama Cord Jefferson, ha quarantadue anni, e questo è il suo esordio dietro la macchina da presa. Finora è stato più attivo come sceneggiatore. Il cast è buono e funziona bene: il protagonista è interpretato da Jeffrey Wright, il suo agente da John Ortiz, il fratello gay da Sterling K. Brown, e anche gli altri sono ben scelti e all’altezza. Il film risolve la faccenda del romanzo nel romanzo, il famigerato Fuck con una scena magistrale e divertente che non racconto per non sciupare la sorpresa. È una bella immersione nel mondo editoriale e letterario, gli stereotipi, le follie, le cifre che girano. È una satira della negritudine. È una storia di famiglia, di affetti, di rispetto. Un buon film, piacevole e divertente, che no nfa rimpiangere il romanzo.
Il film si intitola “American Fiction”.
Marco Rossari, che ha tradotto quattro dei cinque romanzi di Everett pubblicati in Italia, scrive quanto segue:
Provate a immaginare uno scrittore nero e benestante che – invece di scrivere storie farcite di slang ambientate nel ghetto – si dedica a riscritture postmoderne di classici greci. Un giorno, a corto di soldi e inviperito per l’ennesimo successo televisivamente corretto del romanzo nero sottoproletario e sboccato, decide di scrivere una parodia in quello stile, intitolandola Cazzo (la parola più ricorrente). Provate a immaginare lo scrittore che propone al proprio esterrefatto agente di venderlo agli editori come l’esplosivo esordio di un ex galeotto nigger incazzato e l’ulteriore stupore dell’agente quando il romanzo riceve un’offerta milionaria e balza in cima alle vendite, finendo in corsa al premio letterario dove in giuria si trova proprio il Nostro. Sarà dura convincere i giurati che quella è una porcata scritta in un fine settimana per mostrare come, alla narrativa afro-americana, sia necessaria una cancellazione, opposta e complementare all’invisibilità dell’uomo di Ralph Ellison.
Il colore della mia pelle è marrone scuro, ho i capelli ricci e il naso largo, alcuni dei miei antenati erano schiavi e mi è capitato di essere trattenuto da certi poliziotti palliducci in New Hampshire, Arizona e Georgia, quindi la società in cui vivo mi dice che sono nero, che questa è la mia razza.
Ma questa è solo una delle chiavi di lettura.
Oppure, solo una delle storie che si leggono in queste pagine. Uno dei romanzi qui raccolti: perché a volte ho avuto la sensazione che si trattasse di una storia nella storia di una storia. Meta-fiction?
Per esempio, altrettanto importante mi pare la storia familiare di questo scrittore, che si chiama Thelonius Ellison, ma per tutti è Monk, e per sua madre Monksie: il padre suicida sette anni fa, la madre di giorno in giorno sempre più vittima dell’Alzheimer, la sorella maggiore ginecologa in una clinica di trincea assediata dagli antiabortisti, e il fratello maggiore che decide di vivere la sua omosessualità nonostante abbia moglie e figli, ma tutti hanno sempre sospettato che fosse gay.
E a un certo punto da una scatola di latta emerge un segreto che probabilmente è meglio leggere.
Il nostro scrittore lascia la costa ovest dove vive per raggiungere Washington e prendersi cura della mamma, e anche della badante della mamma alla quale assicura un futuro agiato: perché con il libraccio da “nigger” che ha scritto per protestare contro tutti gli stereotipi della letteratura dei neri d’America, stereotipi di chi scrive e di chi legge, come se essere nero volesse dire solo ed esclusivamente povertà ignoranza promiscuità slang droga violenza galera, come se invece non avessero avuto il primo presidente degli Stati Uniti d’America di colore nero (mentre quello di sesso femminile lo stanno ancora cercando) che era bello intelligente e con voce sexy proprio come JFK.
Con quel libraccio guadagna bei gruzzoli, trecentomila dollari d’anticipo sulla pubblicazione e tre milioni per i diritti cinema, e può permettersi di badare alla badante della mamma e alla stessa mamma senza doversi preoccupare d’accettare un merdoso incarico d’insegnante a tempo in un qualche scrauso college dell’est.
E poi c’è il romanzaccio condito di turpiloquio e annaffiato di volgarità che sbanca il botteghino: Percival Everett lo riporta tutto, versione integrale.
E poi ci sono spezzoni di conversazioni tra artisti famosi, Klee, Rothko, Wittgenstein, Derrida, dialoghi immaginari che sembrano appunti per futura scrittura, taccuini letterari.
E ci sono anche brevi racconti sulla pesca e sulla falegnameria, i due hobby preferiti dal nostro scrittore protagonista.
E mentre fa tutto questo, Percival Everett spara bordate contro l’archetipo culturale della negritudine, la retorica del ghetto, l’immagine stereotipata che il mondo letterario, televisivo e cinematografico ha della cultura afroamericana.
E tutto quanto è scritto con ironia a tratti esilarante, con intelligenza, ed eleganza, profondità, e potenza, tocca il grottesco ma lo fa, mi viene da dire, con poesia, con finezza.
Un libro ricco, stratificato, mai freddo e mai banale, che non rinuncia al sentimento e si legge con grande facilità.
E da qui comincia la mia conoscenza con questo scrittore.
E adesso c’è il film che ha impiegato oltre vent’anni prima d’essere realizzato (il libro è uscito nel 2001, il film nel 2023). Lo firma un regista afroamericano che si chiama Cord Jefferson, ha quarantadue anni, e questo è il suo esordio dietro la macchina da presa. Finora è stato più attivo come sceneggiatore. Il cast è buono e funziona bene: il protagonista è interpretato da Jeffrey Wright, il suo agente da John Ortiz, il fratello gay da Sterling K. Brown, e anche gli altri sono ben scelti e all’altezza. Il film risolve la faccenda del romanzo nel romanzo, il famigerato Fuck con una scena magistrale e divertente che non racconto per non sciupare la sorpresa. È una bella immersione nel mondo editoriale e letterario, gli stereotipi, le follie, le cifre che girano. È una satira della negritudine. È una storia di famiglia, di affetti, di rispetto. Un buon film, piacevole e divertente, che no nfa rimpiangere il romanzo.
Il film si intitola “American Fiction”.
March 5, 2024
A strange blend of family drama and razor-sharp satire. Thelonious Ellison is an academic writer in the mould of Barthes or Derrida, whose unreadable works upset and alienate colleagues and readers. Riled by the rise of cheap and racist "ghetto-lit," he pens a satire against the genre, which becomes unbearably popular.
Despite this mouthwatering premise, however, most of Erasure is about Ellison's relationship with his mother, a passionate woman succumbing to Alzhemier's. The story is a touching look at a damaged family divided by the notion of being black and clever. The scenes between a young Ellison and his father ring truer, opening windows into a complex psyche.
The satire/drama blend is a little uneven, but this is an entertaining novel if you are prepared to follow its snakes and snarks.
Despite this mouthwatering premise, however, most of Erasure is about Ellison's relationship with his mother, a passionate woman succumbing to Alzhemier's. The story is a touching look at a damaged family divided by the notion of being black and clever. The scenes between a young Ellison and his father ring truer, opening windows into a complex psyche.
The satire/drama blend is a little uneven, but this is an entertaining novel if you are prepared to follow its snakes and snarks.
March 21, 2024
The premise of this book is just fantastic: A Black writer has trouble selling books, because his sound and themes are considered not Black enough, so he crafts a parody of a ghetto novel that appeals to the white gaze and - bam! - makes big bucks and sells movie rights. As this is Percival Everett, the satiric "Erasure" is hilarious, but the topic at its core is bitter: The text ponders different layers of alienation, and the story is inspired by the author's own experiences, because he, as a middle-class Black man, grew up without novels that reflect his experience.
"Erasure"'s protagonist Thelonoius "Monk" Ellison (a compound of jazz pianist Thelonius Monk, who was known for being able to play completely different things simultaneously with his left and right hand, and Ralph Ellison, author of Invisible Man) is a Black professor who grew up in a middle-class family and writes complex, theory-heavy novels. Infuriated by the success of racist ghetto-lit deemed authentic by non-Black people, he authors "My Pafology", fully thinking that readers will realize that this parody mocks the white appreciation for the fetish of the destitute, uneducated Black person which allows white liberals to indulge in white savior fantasies (actually, this more than twenty-year-old book has acquired new meanings in the light of the woke era). "My Pafology" gets published, even after Monk demanded it to be re-named "Fuck"!, under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh (Stagger Lee was an infamous pimp and murderer who inspired a well-known folk song). Nothing seems obscenely stereotypical enough, and "Fuck" becomes a hit.
Meanwhile, Monk's resentment grows, as he is only granted to be considered an authentic Black voice when he presents as inauthentic. Based on Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Everett pushes Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks even further: Black Monk does not wear a white mask to make it, no, he accidentally becomes successful by wearing a Black mask crafted by the white gaze, by presenting as the type of Black writer the white audience wants to consume without really engaging with him. The mask he put on is a clown's mask, but no one gets the joke, which causes him despair.
Everett adds the entirety of "My Pafology" / "Fuck" in the first half of the novel, plus we get the real novel about a Black middle-class family woven into the plot, as we learn about Monk's family history, from his father over his siblings to his mother who suffers from Alzheimer's. If you look closely, "My Pafology" / "Fuck" even intentionally distorts parts of the real family history. Interestingly, "Erasure" was published a mere three years after Caucasia, a novel by Everett's wife Danzy Senna that also challenges a Black stereotype, in this case the "tragic mulatto" (ray of hope: I had to read "Caucasia" at university to learn about racist stereotyping in American literature!).
The whole construction is clever and ambitious, but in the end, it doesn't quite come together. The characters and events considering Monk's family are so interesting and rich, other writers would have used this set-up for three 700-page-novels (looking at you, Jonathan Franzen) - and Everett employs it as a side show to underline his point. His material is just too dense and would have deserved more room to breathe. With this construction, a lot of the pacing becomes uneven.
Still - and probably needless to say - Everett is one of the greatest writers in American literature working today, and this novel slaps.
(Joke's also on me: I actually liked Push, one of the novels Everett clearly satirizes. For comparison, just look at the movie trailers:
- Erasure / American Fiction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0MbL...
- Push / Precious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urFY3...
"Erasure"'s protagonist Thelonoius "Monk" Ellison (a compound of jazz pianist Thelonius Monk, who was known for being able to play completely different things simultaneously with his left and right hand, and Ralph Ellison, author of Invisible Man) is a Black professor who grew up in a middle-class family and writes complex, theory-heavy novels. Infuriated by the success of racist ghetto-lit deemed authentic by non-Black people, he authors "My Pafology", fully thinking that readers will realize that this parody mocks the white appreciation for the fetish of the destitute, uneducated Black person which allows white liberals to indulge in white savior fantasies (actually, this more than twenty-year-old book has acquired new meanings in the light of the woke era). "My Pafology" gets published, even after Monk demanded it to be re-named "Fuck"!, under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh (Stagger Lee was an infamous pimp and murderer who inspired a well-known folk song). Nothing seems obscenely stereotypical enough, and "Fuck" becomes a hit.
Meanwhile, Monk's resentment grows, as he is only granted to be considered an authentic Black voice when he presents as inauthentic. Based on Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Everett pushes Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks even further: Black Monk does not wear a white mask to make it, no, he accidentally becomes successful by wearing a Black mask crafted by the white gaze, by presenting as the type of Black writer the white audience wants to consume without really engaging with him. The mask he put on is a clown's mask, but no one gets the joke, which causes him despair.
Everett adds the entirety of "My Pafology" / "Fuck" in the first half of the novel, plus we get the real novel about a Black middle-class family woven into the plot, as we learn about Monk's family history, from his father over his siblings to his mother who suffers from Alzheimer's. If you look closely, "My Pafology" / "Fuck" even intentionally distorts parts of the real family history. Interestingly, "Erasure" was published a mere three years after Caucasia, a novel by Everett's wife Danzy Senna that also challenges a Black stereotype, in this case the "tragic mulatto" (ray of hope: I had to read "Caucasia" at university to learn about racist stereotyping in American literature!).
The whole construction is clever and ambitious, but in the end, it doesn't quite come together. The characters and events considering Monk's family are so interesting and rich, other writers would have used this set-up for three 700-page-novels (looking at you, Jonathan Franzen) - and Everett employs it as a side show to underline his point. His material is just too dense and would have deserved more room to breathe. With this construction, a lot of the pacing becomes uneven.
Still - and probably needless to say - Everett is one of the greatest writers in American literature working today, and this novel slaps.
(Joke's also on me: I actually liked Push, one of the novels Everett clearly satirizes. For comparison, just look at the movie trailers:
- Erasure / American Fiction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0MbL...
- Push / Precious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urFY3...
August 28, 2021
This is the second novel I've read by Percival Everett and I've decided after reading this one that I'm going to continue and read another one. Everett's novels are challenging because the reader has to do more work than usual to read and understand. His books could be described as experimental. They often contain what I would call commercial breaks - passages or dialogue that interrupt the story but that put emphasis on various themes that are part of the novel or not.
In Erasure the main character Thelonious Monk alias Monk or Monksie, is an author who writes novels that are highly intellectual and not particularly loved. This protagonist is the alter-ego of Percival Everett. So Much Blue has a protagonist which has a similar personality. Erasure discusses and critiques the publishing and literary world. I thoroughly enjoyed the constant jabs because they are all true. The novel turns around Monk's dysfunctional family and that makes for some great twists and turns throughout the novel. I highly recommend this one for readers that are up for a challenge and won't give up because they don't understand everything. Everett clearly has a thing for France because this book contained of culturally French things. As a matter of fact So Much Blue was set half the time in Paris. So if these things seem enticing to you pick it up.
In Erasure the main character Thelonious Monk alias Monk or Monksie, is an author who writes novels that are highly intellectual and not particularly loved. This protagonist is the alter-ego of Percival Everett. So Much Blue has a protagonist which has a similar personality. Erasure discusses and critiques the publishing and literary world. I thoroughly enjoyed the constant jabs because they are all true. The novel turns around Monk's dysfunctional family and that makes for some great twists and turns throughout the novel. I highly recommend this one for readers that are up for a challenge and won't give up because they don't understand everything. Everett clearly has a thing for France because this book contained of culturally French things. As a matter of fact So Much Blue was set half the time in Paris. So if these things seem enticing to you pick it up.
March 15, 2023
Percival Everett is a very funny and very clever writer. Erasure, however, was not as funny as it might have been and far too clever for its own good. The characters were well written, and the satire was razor-sharp, but there were too many Latin quotes and obscure cultural references for my liking.
September 6, 2016
ERASURE was published eight years ago, in 2001, before the J.T. Leroy hoax was outed and before the eerily echoing current debate over the film PRECIOUS. it's hard to discuss the novel without talking about its elaborate plot and book-within-a-book structure. here's PW's gloss:
Thelonius "Monk" Ellison is an erudite, accomplished but seldom-read author who insists on writing obscure literary papers rather than the so-called "ghetto prose" that would make him a commercial success. He finally succumbs to temptation after seeing the Oberlin-educated author of We's Lives in da Ghetto during her appearance on a talk show, firing back with a parody called My Pafology, which he submits to his startled agent under the gangsta pseudonym of Stagg R. Leigh. Ellison quickly finds himself with a six-figure advance from a major house, a multimillion-dollar offer for the movie rights and a monster bestseller on his hands. ...Ellison becomes a judge for a major book award and My Pafology (title changed to Fuck) gets nominated, forcing the author to come to terms with his perverse literary joke.
i once heard a writer complain how difficult it is to write satire these days -- when the satire and the satiree both show up on the letterman show, mug at each other's jokes, and then laugh together all the way to the bank. that is, there's a complicity in most so-called satirical entertainment with the essential mode and delivery methods of what is being satirized.
ERASURE isn't like this. its satire stings because it's generous and complicated enough to shame and indict all of us for the creation and maintenance of a market-driven intellectual life, a literary culture that rewards sensation and provocation over art, and an unquestioned and reductive -- even internalized -- racist ideology.
for a more in-depth overview of some of everett's source material, check out this review by bernard bell, which, while analyzing well what the book does, also ends itself with a sly (if i'm reading it right) criticism of the protaganist's (and maybe the author's) vantage of privledge: "Contrary to the popularity in the academies of anti-essentialist arguments by postmodern critics, the authority, authenticity, and agency of the identities of most African Americans emanate most distinctively and innovatively from the particularity of our historical struggle against slavery and its legacy of antiblack racism in the United States."
what ellison the character argues in ERASURE is that blackness is, must be, wide enough to include his own subjectivity. however, forces both within and without this novel refuse to cooperate, assigning the black identity only to a particular (romanticized and fetishized) “inner-city,” “gritty,” and “ghetto” experience. everett screams foul at such a distortion. ishmael reed agrees, having written a few years before this article on the scapegoat idea of a "black pathology" (a phrase which everett uses to name his street lit parody). reed writes: "The only difference between white pathology and black pathology is that white pathology is underreported."
but all the above discussion aside for a moment, let’s acknowledge too that, while freighted with heavy consequence and while trying to make real points and to hit its targets hard – ERASURE is a pleasure to read, mostly for its patient, uproarious but never overwrought nor sensational prose. what a touch it is to be all in one book: deadly serious, furious, and howlingly funny.
Thelonius "Monk" Ellison is an erudite, accomplished but seldom-read author who insists on writing obscure literary papers rather than the so-called "ghetto prose" that would make him a commercial success. He finally succumbs to temptation after seeing the Oberlin-educated author of We's Lives in da Ghetto during her appearance on a talk show, firing back with a parody called My Pafology, which he submits to his startled agent under the gangsta pseudonym of Stagg R. Leigh. Ellison quickly finds himself with a six-figure advance from a major house, a multimillion-dollar offer for the movie rights and a monster bestseller on his hands. ...Ellison becomes a judge for a major book award and My Pafology (title changed to Fuck) gets nominated, forcing the author to come to terms with his perverse literary joke.
i once heard a writer complain how difficult it is to write satire these days -- when the satire and the satiree both show up on the letterman show, mug at each other's jokes, and then laugh together all the way to the bank. that is, there's a complicity in most so-called satirical entertainment with the essential mode and delivery methods of what is being satirized.
ERASURE isn't like this. its satire stings because it's generous and complicated enough to shame and indict all of us for the creation and maintenance of a market-driven intellectual life, a literary culture that rewards sensation and provocation over art, and an unquestioned and reductive -- even internalized -- racist ideology.
for a more in-depth overview of some of everett's source material, check out this review by bernard bell, which, while analyzing well what the book does, also ends itself with a sly (if i'm reading it right) criticism of the protaganist's (and maybe the author's) vantage of privledge: "Contrary to the popularity in the academies of anti-essentialist arguments by postmodern critics, the authority, authenticity, and agency of the identities of most African Americans emanate most distinctively and innovatively from the particularity of our historical struggle against slavery and its legacy of antiblack racism in the United States."
what ellison the character argues in ERASURE is that blackness is, must be, wide enough to include his own subjectivity. however, forces both within and without this novel refuse to cooperate, assigning the black identity only to a particular (romanticized and fetishized) “inner-city,” “gritty,” and “ghetto” experience. everett screams foul at such a distortion. ishmael reed agrees, having written a few years before this article on the scapegoat idea of a "black pathology" (a phrase which everett uses to name his street lit parody). reed writes: "The only difference between white pathology and black pathology is that white pathology is underreported."
but all the above discussion aside for a moment, let’s acknowledge too that, while freighted with heavy consequence and while trying to make real points and to hit its targets hard – ERASURE is a pleasure to read, mostly for its patient, uproarious but never overwrought nor sensational prose. what a touch it is to be all in one book: deadly serious, furious, and howlingly funny.
November 5, 2022
Rating: 2.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Thelonious "Monk" Ellison’s writing career has bottomed out: his latest manuscript has been rejected by seventeen publishers, which stings all the more because his previous novels have been "critically acclaimed." He seethes on the sidelines of the literary establishment as he watches the meteoric success of We’s Lives in Da Ghetto, a first novel by a woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days." Meanwhile, Monk struggles with real family tragedies—his aged mother is fast succumbing to Alzheimer’s, and he still grapples with the reverberations of his father’s suicide seven years before.
In his rage and despair, Monk dashes off a novel meant to be an indictment of Juanita Mae Jenkins’s bestseller. He doesn’t intend for My Pafology to be published, let alone taken seriously, but it is—under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh—and soon it becomes the Next Big Thing. How Monk deals with the personal and professional fallout galvanizes this audacious, hysterical, and quietly devastating novel.”
My Review: Why am I giving this only two and a half stars? Because, in my world, books that have satirical aims should have sharp focus and clear line-of-sight on their target. I'm not clear on the target here: Modern Murrikin kulcher in general? Political Correctness and its idiotic unintended side effect of glamorizing substandard stuff? The sad fate of a critically acclaimed but commercially ignored writer? “All of the above” seems to be the answer Everett gives, and this is the source of my discontent. With that many targets in his sights, plus the plight of children of aging parents, plus the sibling dynamic in a family of high achievers...too much. Nothing gets enough time or attention.
It's a damn shame, too, because Everett can write his tuchus off, and should have spent his seed a wee tiny bit more carefully. In the ten years since the novel was first published, it has (sadly) not become less timely. So there's that going for it. But really, with all the terrific books there already are to read, why spend money and eyeblinks on an almost-good one?
The Publisher Says: Thelonious "Monk" Ellison’s writing career has bottomed out: his latest manuscript has been rejected by seventeen publishers, which stings all the more because his previous novels have been "critically acclaimed." He seethes on the sidelines of the literary establishment as he watches the meteoric success of We’s Lives in Da Ghetto, a first novel by a woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days." Meanwhile, Monk struggles with real family tragedies—his aged mother is fast succumbing to Alzheimer’s, and he still grapples with the reverberations of his father’s suicide seven years before.
In his rage and despair, Monk dashes off a novel meant to be an indictment of Juanita Mae Jenkins’s bestseller. He doesn’t intend for My Pafology to be published, let alone taken seriously, but it is—under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh—and soon it becomes the Next Big Thing. How Monk deals with the personal and professional fallout galvanizes this audacious, hysterical, and quietly devastating novel.”
My Review: Why am I giving this only two and a half stars? Because, in my world, books that have satirical aims should have sharp focus and clear line-of-sight on their target. I'm not clear on the target here: Modern Murrikin kulcher in general? Political Correctness and its idiotic unintended side effect of glamorizing substandard stuff? The sad fate of a critically acclaimed but commercially ignored writer? “All of the above” seems to be the answer Everett gives, and this is the source of my discontent. With that many targets in his sights, plus the plight of children of aging parents, plus the sibling dynamic in a family of high achievers...too much. Nothing gets enough time or attention.
It's a damn shame, too, because Everett can write his tuchus off, and should have spent his seed a wee tiny bit more carefully. In the ten years since the novel was first published, it has (sadly) not become less timely. So there's that going for it. But really, with all the terrific books there already are to read, why spend money and eyeblinks on an almost-good one?
December 31, 2023
his book was published a few years ago, but the audio book was just produced, probably because the book has recently been made into a movie. It is about Monk, a Black author who writes intellectual and critically acclaimed books that are not just about blackness. His books have not been commercial successes. Part of the book features the author’s family - 2 siblings who are doctors, his elderly mother who is developing dementia and his doctor father who committed suicide and left behind some secrets. The other part of the book is a satire of the book publishing business and of exploitative, execrable and very successful novels purportedly delivering an authentic Black experience to gullible audiences. Each part of the book is very realistic and plausible, and the family story is touching.
Monk is appalled by a crappy book about the ghetto experience, based on the couple of days the author spent with some relatives. In frustration, Monk writes a book that he considers to be pure garbage. That book is included in “Erasure” and Monk is right, the book is garbage. It was painful to read so I skipped most of it. Monk sends the book to his agent, fully expecting it to be rejected. The agent hates the book, but agrees to send it to a few publishers using a pen name and fake biography for Monk. Surprise, a publisher snaps up the book and offers Monk piles of cash - much needed due to his family’s circumstances. For the rest of the book Monk has to juggle his 2 identities.
I have had mostly positive experiences with this author. There is a certain “smartest person in the room” quality to his books, which can also be very sharp and amusing. I laughed out loud a few times listening to this book. I am sure that the author has experienced some of Monk’s frustration and I hope that he made piles of cash selling the movie rights to this book. 4.5 stars
Monk is appalled by a crappy book about the ghetto experience, based on the couple of days the author spent with some relatives. In frustration, Monk writes a book that he considers to be pure garbage. That book is included in “Erasure” and Monk is right, the book is garbage. It was painful to read so I skipped most of it. Monk sends the book to his agent, fully expecting it to be rejected. The agent hates the book, but agrees to send it to a few publishers using a pen name and fake biography for Monk. Surprise, a publisher snaps up the book and offers Monk piles of cash - much needed due to his family’s circumstances. For the rest of the book Monk has to juggle his 2 identities.
I have had mostly positive experiences with this author. There is a certain “smartest person in the room” quality to his books, which can also be very sharp and amusing. I laughed out loud a few times listening to this book. I am sure that the author has experienced some of Monk’s frustration and I hope that he made piles of cash selling the movie rights to this book. 4.5 stars
March 23, 2024
CRITIQUE:
Idea for a Book Review
As I read this book, each word, then each line, each sentence, each paragraph, each page, each chapter, and finally the protagonist and the author, one after the other, started to unravel, and then to disappear from sight. By the time I'd finished reading the book, I had erased it. Or somebody or something had erased it. Or it had been erased. All that was left was an erasure. Nothing of what the author had intended to write remained. His book was all nothingness. It had become nothingness. Perhaps that was his intention. Perhaps he had used me, the reader, as his factotum or amanuensis. He mightn't have had the courage or the desire to erase his own book (or to let it be erased). Such is the hubris of the author, well, any author.
Black Faces, White Masks
On the front cover of my copy of this novel is a photograph of a young black boy holding a pistol to his right temple.
It's arguable that this photo says more about the nature of racism than the mass shooting at the Dollar General store in Jacksonville, which took place on the day I finished reading the novel.
By this, I mean that such crimes aren't so much the result of a "personal ideology", as a product of systemic linguistic and cultural racism.
Language and culture contain and purvey disdain for people of a different colour, gender, sexuality, ideology and faith.
The boy on the cover doesn't need to be attacked by a "racist". He can be killed by pulling the trigger of his pistol himself (or "hisself" as the fictional author Stagg R. Leigh might say).
The hegemony of language and culture will kill the boy, any boy, by putting the pistol in his hand, pointing it at his temple, and pulling the trigger. The boy becomes the vehicle through which the culture kills one of its own.
Black people cannot escape from the impact and consequences of racism, because they form part of the shared language and culture. It is dictated that they will remain black, even if they (or their masks) look white, or look less black than other Black Americans (or Australians).
Publishing and Television
It's possibly for this reason that Percival Everett's argument as a novelist is less with individual racists than with the ultimate cause of racism: language and culture.
Everett, through his narrator, the academic and writer, Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, attacks the publishing and television industries.
Monk writes postmodern novels that publishers and agents describe, like the works of John Barth, as "retellings of Euripides and parodies of French poststructuralists". One reviewer writes of his most recently published novel:
Two normative biases can be inferred from this comment: firstly, as a black writer, he shouldn't be entitled to write about non-black (or universal) subject matter, or subject matter that relates equally to two or more categories of human; secondly, as a black writer, he should "settle down to write the true, gritty real stories of black life." He should be confined to stories of the ghetto.
To which last statement, I would respond on Monk's behalf (using the words of another Monk): "well you needn't."
Still, Monk's idiosyncratic interests make him question whether he is "black enough".
Thus, he is alienated from both culture at large and his own sub-culture.
Geoffrey Wright in the film "American Fiction", which is based on "Erasure"
Erasing the Black/ Postmodern Self
When his latest novel is rejected for the seventeenth time, Monk's agent urges him to write something like the bestseller ("We's Lives in Da Ghetto") written by Juanita Mae Jenkins that was welcomed and promoted by the Oprah-tic talk show host, Kenya Dunston.
Despite his misgivings, under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh, Monk writes just such a novel, which is called "My Pafology" and then "Fuck", the protagonist and narrator of which is Van Go Jenkins. The novel is short enough to be incorporated into "Erasure".
It turns out to be a massive commercial and critical success, though at the expense of Monk's identity, authenticity and integrity.
Ironically, "Erasure" itself is a combination of realistic writing and postmodern structure. It purports to be Monk's personal journal, in which he writes down his CV, diary entries, ideas for novels, scripts for television appearances, the novel within the novel, and the novel which contains the novel within the novel.
Ultimately, what appears at first to be fragmentary coheres into a highly intelligent, humorous and self-aware work of fiction.
SOUNDTRACK:
Idea for a Book Review
As I read this book, each word, then each line, each sentence, each paragraph, each page, each chapter, and finally the protagonist and the author, one after the other, started to unravel, and then to disappear from sight. By the time I'd finished reading the book, I had erased it. Or somebody or something had erased it. Or it had been erased. All that was left was an erasure. Nothing of what the author had intended to write remained. His book was all nothingness. It had become nothingness. Perhaps that was his intention. Perhaps he had used me, the reader, as his factotum or amanuensis. He mightn't have had the courage or the desire to erase his own book (or to let it be erased). Such is the hubris of the author, well, any author.
Black Faces, White Masks
On the front cover of my copy of this novel is a photograph of a young black boy holding a pistol to his right temple.
It's arguable that this photo says more about the nature of racism than the mass shooting at the Dollar General store in Jacksonville, which took place on the day I finished reading the novel.
By this, I mean that such crimes aren't so much the result of a "personal ideology", as a product of systemic linguistic and cultural racism.
Language and culture contain and purvey disdain for people of a different colour, gender, sexuality, ideology and faith.
The boy on the cover doesn't need to be attacked by a "racist". He can be killed by pulling the trigger of his pistol himself (or "hisself" as the fictional author Stagg R. Leigh might say).
The hegemony of language and culture will kill the boy, any boy, by putting the pistol in his hand, pointing it at his temple, and pulling the trigger. The boy becomes the vehicle through which the culture kills one of its own.
Black people cannot escape from the impact and consequences of racism, because they form part of the shared language and culture. It is dictated that they will remain black, even if they (or their masks) look white, or look less black than other Black Americans (or Australians).
Publishing and Television
It's possibly for this reason that Percival Everett's argument as a novelist is less with individual racists than with the ultimate cause of racism: language and culture.
Everett, through his narrator, the academic and writer, Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, attacks the publishing and television industries.
Monk writes postmodern novels that publishers and agents describe, like the works of John Barth, as "retellings of Euripides and parodies of French poststructuralists". One reviewer writes of his most recently published novel:
"The novel is finely crafted, with fully developed characters, rich language and subtle play with the plot, but one is lost to understand what his reworking of Aeschylus' 'The Persians' has to do with the African American experience."
Two normative biases can be inferred from this comment: firstly, as a black writer, he shouldn't be entitled to write about non-black (or universal) subject matter, or subject matter that relates equally to two or more categories of human; secondly, as a black writer, he should "settle down to write the true, gritty real stories of black life." He should be confined to stories of the ghetto.
To which last statement, I would respond on Monk's behalf (using the words of another Monk): "well you needn't."
Still, Monk's idiosyncratic interests make him question whether he is "black enough".
Thus, he is alienated from both culture at large and his own sub-culture.
Geoffrey Wright in the film "American Fiction", which is based on "Erasure"
Erasing the Black/ Postmodern Self
When his latest novel is rejected for the seventeenth time, Monk's agent urges him to write something like the bestseller ("We's Lives in Da Ghetto") written by Juanita Mae Jenkins that was welcomed and promoted by the Oprah-tic talk show host, Kenya Dunston.
Despite his misgivings, under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh, Monk writes just such a novel, which is called "My Pafology" and then "Fuck", the protagonist and narrator of which is Van Go Jenkins. The novel is short enough to be incorporated into "Erasure".
It turns out to be a massive commercial and critical success, though at the expense of Monk's identity, authenticity and integrity.
Ironically, "Erasure" itself is a combination of realistic writing and postmodern structure. It purports to be Monk's personal journal, in which he writes down his CV, diary entries, ideas for novels, scripts for television appearances, the novel within the novel, and the novel which contains the novel within the novel.
Ultimately, what appears at first to be fragmentary coheres into a highly intelligent, humorous and self-aware work of fiction.
SOUNDTRACK:
June 27, 2024
Reading Percival Everett's novel Erasure is a lot like playing Snakes and Ladders. You can roll the die and move a few spaces ahead, you can land on a snake and slide backwards, or you can land on a ladder and climb way ahead. This novel is framed as a journal and thus is written in fragments. Sometimes I grasp what Everett is trying to do here, sometimes I am lost or sent searching for more information, and sometimes I am excited and get on with the story.
The overriding story arc: Thelonius "Monk" Ellison, a Black writer, gets furious with the whole U.S. literary scene when a first time author writes a novel called We's Lives In Da Ghetto that becomes a runaway hit and earns a lot of money. In frustration (and maybe petty jealousy), Monk sits down and bangs out a parody of Black life as portrayed in this work. When submitted to a publisher, it is not recognized as such and they offer him 6 figures for his novella My Pafology. The film rights are then sold for millions. Read as a parody, the novella is bitingly funny.
The other story arc is that of Monk's family. Monk describes current events in his journal, interspersed with memories. And there is a parallel between this arc and My Pafology. I think the contrast between this "real" family that is richly portrayed and the very stereotyped ghetto characters in the parody is Everett's point.
Other fragments in Monk's journal are strange story ideas, thoughts about trout fishing and woodworking (Monk's hobbies), dreams, and conversations between post-modern philosophers and artists. There's a lot to delve into for the reader who is so inclined.
While I am fascinated by the various fragments and enjoy the intellectual challenge of trying to piece them together, they do not allow for a seamlessly flowing well-paced story. In the end, is Monk able to assemble these fragments in a meaningful way for his life?
What I walk away from this novel with are the lingering underlying themes of alienation and erasure in a work that is sharply funny, blisteringly angry and achingly sad.
Publication 2001
The overriding story arc: Thelonius "Monk" Ellison, a Black writer, gets furious with the whole U.S. literary scene when a first time author writes a novel called We's Lives In Da Ghetto that becomes a runaway hit and earns a lot of money. In frustration (and maybe petty jealousy), Monk sits down and bangs out a parody of Black life as portrayed in this work. When submitted to a publisher, it is not recognized as such and they offer him 6 figures for his novella My Pafology. The film rights are then sold for millions. Read as a parody, the novella is bitingly funny.
The other story arc is that of Monk's family. Monk describes current events in his journal, interspersed with memories. And there is a parallel between this arc and My Pafology. I think the contrast between this "real" family that is richly portrayed and the very stereotyped ghetto characters in the parody is Everett's point.
Other fragments in Monk's journal are strange story ideas, thoughts about trout fishing and woodworking (Monk's hobbies), dreams, and conversations between post-modern philosophers and artists. There's a lot to delve into for the reader who is so inclined.
While I am fascinated by the various fragments and enjoy the intellectual challenge of trying to piece them together, they do not allow for a seamlessly flowing well-paced story. In the end, is Monk able to assemble these fragments in a meaningful way for his life?
What I walk away from this novel with are the lingering underlying themes of alienation and erasure in a work that is sharply funny, blisteringly angry and achingly sad.
Publication 2001
November 1, 2023
In case you weren’t aware, the upcoming film AMERICAN FICTION is based on the source material of ERASURE. The film has been receiving stellar reviews and Oscar buzz, so it’s an exciting time to be a Percival Everett fan.
And a huge Percy fan I am. This is now my fifth completed Everett novel and they’ve all blown my mind in wildly different ways. And all are 5-star bangers. My ranking: So Much Blue > Telephone > Erasure > The Trees > Dr. No
But let’s completely zero in on this one: ERASURE is an intelligent balance between satire, farce, social commentary, and domestic drama. To be honest, the constant shift in tone can be jarring, albeit in a welcoming way. By this constant manoeuvring between style and mood, Everett keeps us on our toes. Always. When he thinks we’re laughing too much, he’s not afraid to hit us hard with a harsh truth. And then when we’re shaken from this blistering revelation, he then reminds us that at the root of all this craziness is really an incredibly sad story.
ERASURE is a ruthless look at how the publishing world tries to pigeonhole Black writers. But how do we truly define African-American literature? And why do publishers think they’ve figured out the formula? And why are their findings so out of touch? I cannot properly convey how much Everett twists and turns and reshapes and reconfigures these themes over and over until they tell us something entirely original and blisteringly truthful.
We follow our narrator Monk, a Black author who writes wildly underrated and underappreciated (also underselling) experimental fiction. In contrast to Monk’s dilemma, a new Black writer on the scene is raking in millions from her debut “We’s Lives in Da Ghetto,” a book Monk finds deeply offensive; a book that is heavily stereotypical of the “ghetto” and written in exaggerated “ghetto lingo.” And what hurts even more is that the book is being hailed as the “voice of the African-American experience.” One anger-induced night, as a joke Monk writes a novel similar in style to it (we actually get to read the entire book here!!) and it shockingly becomes the new literary sensation.
Everett left no stone unturned in his scathing takedown and mockery of the publishing world and how they commodify Black voices (and I’m picking up on a meta vibe). I felt like I couldn’t breathe most of the time, either from laughing so hard or gasping at the sheer audacity. It goes hard. I am almost positive that Everett was poking fun at the success of the novel PUSH by Sapphire (I will put money on it. It has to be that haha).
Everett did not take any prisoners here. He takes on professional reviewers, editors, agents, celebrity book clubs, and even book prizes. There is a lengthy plot point that involves the National Book Award that is so outrageously funny and has now made me look at the arbitrary decision of book prize committees in a different light.
Oh and did I forget the contrivance of book promotion: “The covers were all so attractive. The jacket copy made each one sound great, blurbs from established literary icons told me why I should like it. The fat books were praised for being fat, the skinny books were praised for being skinny, old writers were great because they were old, young writers were talents because of their youth, every one was startling, ground-breaking, warm, chilling, original, honest and human.”
But as much as this book is uproarious, Everett does bring us back down to Earth once you understand the reason Monk is taking the path of becoming a “sellout.” At the heart and soul of this novel is a heartbreaking story. We can fight tooth and nail for the sake of our art, but sometimes it’s humbling to let it all go.
What a force. So intelligent and I openly admit that some of it went over my head. Percival Everett, I’m a little more in love with you.
And a huge Percy fan I am. This is now my fifth completed Everett novel and they’ve all blown my mind in wildly different ways. And all are 5-star bangers. My ranking: So Much Blue > Telephone > Erasure > The Trees > Dr. No
But let’s completely zero in on this one: ERASURE is an intelligent balance between satire, farce, social commentary, and domestic drama. To be honest, the constant shift in tone can be jarring, albeit in a welcoming way. By this constant manoeuvring between style and mood, Everett keeps us on our toes. Always. When he thinks we’re laughing too much, he’s not afraid to hit us hard with a harsh truth. And then when we’re shaken from this blistering revelation, he then reminds us that at the root of all this craziness is really an incredibly sad story.
ERASURE is a ruthless look at how the publishing world tries to pigeonhole Black writers. But how do we truly define African-American literature? And why do publishers think they’ve figured out the formula? And why are their findings so out of touch? I cannot properly convey how much Everett twists and turns and reshapes and reconfigures these themes over and over until they tell us something entirely original and blisteringly truthful.
We follow our narrator Monk, a Black author who writes wildly underrated and underappreciated (also underselling) experimental fiction. In contrast to Monk’s dilemma, a new Black writer on the scene is raking in millions from her debut “We’s Lives in Da Ghetto,” a book Monk finds deeply offensive; a book that is heavily stereotypical of the “ghetto” and written in exaggerated “ghetto lingo.” And what hurts even more is that the book is being hailed as the “voice of the African-American experience.” One anger-induced night, as a joke Monk writes a novel similar in style to it (we actually get to read the entire book here!!) and it shockingly becomes the new literary sensation.
Everett left no stone unturned in his scathing takedown and mockery of the publishing world and how they commodify Black voices (and I’m picking up on a meta vibe). I felt like I couldn’t breathe most of the time, either from laughing so hard or gasping at the sheer audacity. It goes hard. I am almost positive that Everett was poking fun at the success of the novel PUSH by Sapphire (I will put money on it. It has to be that haha).
Everett did not take any prisoners here. He takes on professional reviewers, editors, agents, celebrity book clubs, and even book prizes. There is a lengthy plot point that involves the National Book Award that is so outrageously funny and has now made me look at the arbitrary decision of book prize committees in a different light.
Oh and did I forget the contrivance of book promotion: “The covers were all so attractive. The jacket copy made each one sound great, blurbs from established literary icons told me why I should like it. The fat books were praised for being fat, the skinny books were praised for being skinny, old writers were great because they were old, young writers were talents because of their youth, every one was startling, ground-breaking, warm, chilling, original, honest and human.”
But as much as this book is uproarious, Everett does bring us back down to Earth once you understand the reason Monk is taking the path of becoming a “sellout.” At the heart and soul of this novel is a heartbreaking story. We can fight tooth and nail for the sake of our art, but sometimes it’s humbling to let it all go.
What a force. So intelligent and I openly admit that some of it went over my head. Percival Everett, I’m a little more in love with you.
July 13, 2024
Menuda joya de libro. Qué inteligencia, qué capacidad de análisis, qué habilidad para tratar con ironía temas serios.
Everett se ríe de sí mismo y de nosotros, desmonta estereotipos y géneros literarios, atraviesa la familia y el oficio artístico… y el cabrón te deja con una sonrisa en la boca. Grandioso.
Edit: Añado una brevísima reseña en formato vídeo de esta espléndida novela https://www.instagram.com/reel/C9WvQR...
Everett se ríe de sí mismo y de nosotros, desmonta estereotipos y géneros literarios, atraviesa la familia y el oficio artístico… y el cabrón te deja con una sonrisa en la boca. Grandioso.
Edit: Añado una brevísima reseña en formato vídeo de esta espléndida novela https://www.instagram.com/reel/C9WvQR...
June 11, 2024
3.5 stars
I thought this book did a great job of portraying the racist bind that Black writers and artists find themselves in when society wants to consume anti-Black caricatures of Black people instead of three-dimensional representations of Black people. My lower rating may stem from a genre mismatch; while Percival Everett takes a satirical approach to Erasure, I wanted to read even more about our main character’s feelings about his relationships, especially his familial relationships. There were initial themes of grief, loss, and disconnection within one’s family and close relationships that I wish we could have read about in more depth. Still, Everett drives the overarching message of this book home and I hope it inspires us all to think critically about which media we enjoy and why we enjoy it.
I thought this book did a great job of portraying the racist bind that Black writers and artists find themselves in when society wants to consume anti-Black caricatures of Black people instead of three-dimensional representations of Black people. My lower rating may stem from a genre mismatch; while Percival Everett takes a satirical approach to Erasure, I wanted to read even more about our main character’s feelings about his relationships, especially his familial relationships. There were initial themes of grief, loss, and disconnection within one’s family and close relationships that I wish we could have read about in more depth. Still, Everett drives the overarching message of this book home and I hope it inspires us all to think critically about which media we enjoy and why we enjoy it.
July 2, 2022
A lifelong writer and academic, Thelonious “Monk” Ellison only receives the kind of acclaim a contemporary author can dream of when he throws together a collection of African-American clichés into a slapdash novel that he couldn’t possibly publish under his real name.
While the above summarizes Erasure’s main storyline, the book branches out into various other directions and I have enjoyed every reflection on art, love, family, pop culture and authenticity that Percival Everett felt inspired to include. Family scenes in particular are handled using some of the cleverest and nimblest writing I’ve encountered when grappling with topics such as the early onset of dementia, a late coming out, or feelings of self-awareness and social awkwardness.
This was my first book by Everett. Erasure may be his most popular title, but I’ve heard great things about other ones like Telephone and God’s Country, as of late; this is a budding infatuation to be continued, I’d say.
While the above summarizes Erasure’s main storyline, the book branches out into various other directions and I have enjoyed every reflection on art, love, family, pop culture and authenticity that Percival Everett felt inspired to include. Family scenes in particular are handled using some of the cleverest and nimblest writing I’ve encountered when grappling with topics such as the early onset of dementia, a late coming out, or feelings of self-awareness and social awkwardness.
This was my first book by Everett. Erasure may be his most popular title, but I’ve heard great things about other ones like Telephone and God’s Country, as of late; this is a budding infatuation to be continued, I’d say.
December 10, 2017
"I feel generally out of place," says the protagonist Thelonious "Monk" Ellison near the end of this astounding book. Me too. And perhaps that's why this book hits me so personally that I almost can't see straight.
Funny, moving, and—as with the seven other Percival Everett books I've read—unexpected and unpredictable, the paperback of Erasure is printed in a tiny font, and I was glad because I didn't want it to end. I often stopped reading in order to prolong the pleasure.
Without ruining your sweet discovery of this story, suffice it to say that Monk is a multifaceted peg who doesn't fit into any known hole. He is a writer whose books are too dense for most humans. And not only does he wish he could be seen and appreciated for who he is, but he needs money. So he writes an astoundingly awful, racist book—a parody of popular ghetto fiction. However, in writing this novella (included in full in the middle of this novel), Everett has done something so subversive that it makes me scream, and I'm not sure it was intentional. Yes, the novella is stereotypical and funnily offensive, but it also is driven by and mirrors the very frustration of the protagonist writer, and I would guess Everett as well, to be accepted for who he is—a black man who does not fit into anybody else's box—and to have his work appreciated on its own merits. So even as the reader is laughing and/or cringing at the exaggerated stereotypes (chapter titles written: Won, Too, Free . . . Seben, etc.), you are compelled by the cartoon black ghetto man's craving and fury to matter—a craving that is written into all of our DNA. This universality woven into pure dreck makes reading it seductive and gives credence to what then happens to it publicly.
I identified so intensely with the end of the book, I almost had a panic attack.
Like Monk, I've felt generally out of place. I write books that few people read. And at various times in my life, people have suggested that I write books to appeal to the masses. Once I tried, and I collapsed; I couldn't do it. My entire body said, "No!" Monk actually succeeds in this charade, and . . .
Well, read the book.
Funny, moving, and—as with the seven other Percival Everett books I've read—unexpected and unpredictable, the paperback of Erasure is printed in a tiny font, and I was glad because I didn't want it to end. I often stopped reading in order to prolong the pleasure.
Without ruining your sweet discovery of this story, suffice it to say that Monk is a multifaceted peg who doesn't fit into any known hole. He is a writer whose books are too dense for most humans. And not only does he wish he could be seen and appreciated for who he is, but he needs money. So he writes an astoundingly awful, racist book—a parody of popular ghetto fiction. However, in writing this novella (included in full in the middle of this novel), Everett has done something so subversive that it makes me scream, and I'm not sure it was intentional. Yes, the novella is stereotypical and funnily offensive, but it also is driven by and mirrors the very frustration of the protagonist writer, and I would guess Everett as well, to be accepted for who he is—a black man who does not fit into anybody else's box—and to have his work appreciated on its own merits. So even as the reader is laughing and/or cringing at the exaggerated stereotypes (chapter titles written: Won, Too, Free . . . Seben, etc.), you are compelled by the cartoon black ghetto man's craving and fury to matter—a craving that is written into all of our DNA. This universality woven into pure dreck makes reading it seductive and gives credence to what then happens to it publicly.
I identified so intensely with the end of the book, I almost had a panic attack.
Like Monk, I've felt generally out of place. I write books that few people read. And at various times in my life, people have suggested that I write books to appeal to the masses. Once I tried, and I collapsed; I couldn't do it. My entire body said, "No!" Monk actually succeeds in this charade, and . . .
Well, read the book.
June 25, 2024
The hard, gritty truth of the matter is that I hardly ever think about race. Those times when I did think about it a lot I did so because of my guilt for not thinking about it. I don’t believe in race. I believe there are people who will shoot me or hang me or cheat me and try to stop me because they do believe in race, because of my brown skin, curly hair, wide nose and slave ancestors. But that’s just the way it is.
Thelonious “Monk” Ellison is an African-American professor and writer who is uninterested in writing about the so-called black experience in America. Instead, he writes incredibly erudite literary fiction often based on Greek mythology. But while his books barely sell, he seethes at exploitative fiction like a new bestseller called We's Lives in Da Ghetto. Monk’s personal life is in a spiral: his mother is suffering from Alzheimer’s, his brother’s wife has left him, and his sister was killed by an anti abortion activist. So, in a fit of anger, and with his bills piling up, Monk adopts the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh and writes My Pafology, a deliberately terrible parody about an angry, violent, hyper sexual young man in the ghetto. But when the book sells, and for more money than he has ever made, Monk has to decide how far he’s willing to push what started as a joke.
Erasure has a great set up. Who doesn’t love a good satire of the American publishing industry? And that portion of the novel really works. But this book is quite different from what you’d expect based on the Goodreads description and/or from the trailers for the movie this book was just made into, American Fiction. First, a full quarter of the novel is Stagg R. Leigh’s My Pafology, I guess so that Monk’s disbelief at its later success fully lands with the reader. More importantly, though, what’s surprising is how much of Erasure is not about its brilliant satire of the American publishing industry. It’s simply about Monk trying to come to terms with his mother’s declining health, his grief over his murdered sister, and new information he’s learned about his dead father. You eventually understand that the novel itself is an argument against the idea that writing about the so-called black experience in America has to be some version of what the movie calls ‘black trauma porn.’ Monk is a black man, full of complications and problems involving women and family, but those complications and problems read like an Updike or Roth novel. No guns, no senseless violence, no exploitation, and every bit as valid a black experience in America as any other.
Erasure is a good book, funny in places, thoughtful and thought provoking throughout. The movie it was just made into, American Fiction, is also good, though the changes for the movie highlight some of their relative strengths and weaknesses. The movie has just one scene about the writing of Stagg R. Leigh’s My Pafology, and it made me appreciate the novel’s deeper dive. I felt like I had a much better grasp of how it was so terrible and why its success so baffled Monk. But the movie has a much better ending. Much better, like if the novel had that ending, it would be 5 stars for me instead of 4. Still, both the novel and movie are recommended.
June 12, 2024
How do you review a book about race? You don’t talk about it
God, writing about race as a white liberal is hard work. I just wish someone could put it all together for me in a nice readable narrative package so I can consume it and make the right evaluative noises and ultimately approve of the heinous effects of racism on us as humans. And I wish I could get a laugh at the same time, ironic, of course.
Race is re-ignited whenever someone has enough anger to either fight for it or against it. I, being deluded, thought it was fixed by Sesame Street and other such kindergarten TV shows well before rainbow thinking, diversity movements and anti-discrimination training in the workplace.
I thought James Baldwin solved all the problems of our perceptions of race twenty years before that. I was naïve at each point I observed and read about questions of race. But then racism was never fixed. It lurks in dark corners waiting. This probably led me to Percival Everett when this book first came out twenty years ago.
The perfect place to start thinking about race is our own understanding of it. Everett starts there too (as a middle class academic writer) with the most common racism he encounters - the white liberal, polite society racism with a twist of literary academia cant. Categorisation isn’t easy in this book.
Race is a perception. The world I grew up in categorised everything by shades of difference. That’s why I read James Baldwin, Frantz Fanon, Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X. They were far away, but they explained the world for me. I stopped believing in Sesame Street and rainbows probably because of those books, Everett, too, confirmed it.
Monk Ellison, our protagonist, hates being the recipient of feel-good, well-intentioned thoughts from liberals who say racism is bad. It’s bad according to them because it forces blacks to live in ghettos, and all that accompanies it: misogyny, crime, poverty, crime and victims of violence. But Monk is the son of a doctor, his two siblings are doctors, he's not like ghetto blacks. He has his own views on the world of literature too, he writes a kind of pure intellectual prose, untroubled by poverty, violence, misogyny, crime.
Monk hates these liberal unconscious racists as much as he hates bad writing. And when race and bad writing come together, he gets really mad. He sees behind the veil of polite, empty rhetorical praise when the novel by a black woman written in a vernacular believed to be an authentic representation of ‘the hood’ wins fame, awards, film rights and wealth. Monk is getting nowhere with his own intellectual fiction. Perhaps this is all sour grapes because no one wants to publish his latest unreadable book.
There are plot twists in this novel. So I’ll avoid comments on the action. Monk is failing and flailing and then comes back home to look after his mother with dementia. He experiences tragedy, just like you’d expect in a black American story.
Books rarely make me laugh. But around 11pm one night, I started laughing and couldn’t stop myself. Laughter is a defence mechanism. At first I laughed because Everett, having built up his comedy show routine, finally delivered a punchline. I can’t tell you about it because you need to read the whole spiel. Part way through my uncontrolled laughter, I realised I was also laughing at the irony, the painful, crux of an ironic joke in which a racist idea is expressed so poignantly. And then I just kept laughing, because if I didn’t, I would cry. Laughter cries away the tears.
Everett plays with text. Just like writer-protagonist Monk. At one level, there are these little interludes, no more than a paragraph or two into which Monk enters like a private mental state like meditation, a place where he is free. One is the world of fishing, where he enjoys the technical beauty of lures. And then there’s the emotional and joyous interior zone of wood-working. Both crafts, both deeply satisfying expressions of joy that inject themselves into the story as the character of Monk.
At another level, there is a novel within a novel. If this novel within a novel wasn’t so absurd, no one would believe it. The novel within the novel story goes terribly wrong. And yet, faced with choices about money, family, art, Monk makes an unsavoury decision. A kind of character inside his character emerges making his choices for him. Clever, huh. The comic moments from there build to keep the absurdity of racial matters alive. Twenty years after publication, the absurdity is less obvious. In 2020, these issues felt like they sit on a knife edge. It’s so hard to write about race. I wanted to say so much, thump so many tables with so many words. This is excruciating. Thankfully, I laughed so hard, my defences split.
How do you review a book about race? You don’t talk about it. There’s a joke there but you have to read the book.
____
Addit Apr 2024
Apparently this has now been turned into a TV show called American Fiction. It's all there already in the novel. So it makes sense.
God, writing about race as a white liberal is hard work. I just wish someone could put it all together for me in a nice readable narrative package so I can consume it and make the right evaluative noises and ultimately approve of the heinous effects of racism on us as humans. And I wish I could get a laugh at the same time, ironic, of course.
Race is re-ignited whenever someone has enough anger to either fight for it or against it. I, being deluded, thought it was fixed by Sesame Street and other such kindergarten TV shows well before rainbow thinking, diversity movements and anti-discrimination training in the workplace.
I thought James Baldwin solved all the problems of our perceptions of race twenty years before that. I was naïve at each point I observed and read about questions of race. But then racism was never fixed. It lurks in dark corners waiting. This probably led me to Percival Everett when this book first came out twenty years ago.
The perfect place to start thinking about race is our own understanding of it. Everett starts there too (as a middle class academic writer) with the most common racism he encounters - the white liberal, polite society racism with a twist of literary academia cant. Categorisation isn’t easy in this book.
Race is a perception. The world I grew up in categorised everything by shades of difference. That’s why I read James Baldwin, Frantz Fanon, Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X. They were far away, but they explained the world for me. I stopped believing in Sesame Street and rainbows probably because of those books, Everett, too, confirmed it.
Monk Ellison, our protagonist, hates being the recipient of feel-good, well-intentioned thoughts from liberals who say racism is bad. It’s bad according to them because it forces blacks to live in ghettos, and all that accompanies it: misogyny, crime, poverty, crime and victims of violence. But Monk is the son of a doctor, his two siblings are doctors, he's not like ghetto blacks. He has his own views on the world of literature too, he writes a kind of pure intellectual prose, untroubled by poverty, violence, misogyny, crime.
Monk hates these liberal unconscious racists as much as he hates bad writing. And when race and bad writing come together, he gets really mad. He sees behind the veil of polite, empty rhetorical praise when the novel by a black woman written in a vernacular believed to be an authentic representation of ‘the hood’ wins fame, awards, film rights and wealth. Monk is getting nowhere with his own intellectual fiction. Perhaps this is all sour grapes because no one wants to publish his latest unreadable book.
There are plot twists in this novel. So I’ll avoid comments on the action. Monk is failing and flailing and then comes back home to look after his mother with dementia. He experiences tragedy, just like you’d expect in a black American story.
Books rarely make me laugh. But around 11pm one night, I started laughing and couldn’t stop myself. Laughter is a defence mechanism. At first I laughed because Everett, having built up his comedy show routine, finally delivered a punchline. I can’t tell you about it because you need to read the whole spiel. Part way through my uncontrolled laughter, I realised I was also laughing at the irony, the painful, crux of an ironic joke in which a racist idea is expressed so poignantly. And then I just kept laughing, because if I didn’t, I would cry. Laughter cries away the tears.
Everett plays with text. Just like writer-protagonist Monk. At one level, there are these little interludes, no more than a paragraph or two into which Monk enters like a private mental state like meditation, a place where he is free. One is the world of fishing, where he enjoys the technical beauty of lures. And then there’s the emotional and joyous interior zone of wood-working. Both crafts, both deeply satisfying expressions of joy that inject themselves into the story as the character of Monk.
At another level, there is a novel within a novel. If this novel within a novel wasn’t so absurd, no one would believe it. The novel within the novel story goes terribly wrong. And yet, faced with choices about money, family, art, Monk makes an unsavoury decision. A kind of character inside his character emerges making his choices for him. Clever, huh. The comic moments from there build to keep the absurdity of racial matters alive. Twenty years after publication, the absurdity is less obvious. In 2020, these issues felt like they sit on a knife edge. It’s so hard to write about race. I wanted to say so much, thump so many tables with so many words. This is excruciating. Thankfully, I laughed so hard, my defences split.
How do you review a book about race? You don’t talk about it. There’s a joke there but you have to read the book.
____
Addit Apr 2024
Apparently this has now been turned into a TV show called American Fiction. It's all there already in the novel. So it makes sense.
July 30, 2024
Now I understand a little better why James is the way it is. Let there be no mistake, I still don’t know why he chose to write about slavery considering, and it didn’t work emotionally, but now I see that James was written the only way he would even want to write it, James makes more sense intellectually now. Anyways, glad I read another PE after previously swearing off him, might be back for more.
P.S. Also in the context of this book, isn't it hilarious that the prestigious Booker prize only started noticing Everett's work when he wrote about lynching and now slavery? Don't you find it, like, ironic?
P.S. Also in the context of this book, isn't it hilarious that the prestigious Booker prize only started noticing Everett's work when he wrote about lynching and now slavery? Don't you find it, like, ironic?
April 9, 2024
Generally when a movie I am interested in gets released I immediately Google it to see if it was a book (because, duh, the book is nearly always better – except Forrest Gump - I will eternally shame that book for being turrrrrible). This time around, however, I bitched and moaned about why American Fiction was not being released to one of the twelve thousand streaming services I subscribed to and then only after it won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay did I think “ADAPTED?!?!?!?! WTF ADAPTED!” because . . . .
And then! And then I effing DID finally Google it and discovered it was by my recently discovered best friend Percival Everett who totally blew my mind with The Trees and whose books I have been picking up every few months or so because he’s just brilliant.
After being on the library waiting list for what felt like a billion years my turn finally came around and I got to crawl around in Thelonious (Monk) Ellison’s head for a while. I will stand behind my gif above and say I truly am not smart enough to understand all of the fishing and woodworking interludes that were thrown in here, but the gist of the main story was well worth the price of admission and I’m whining even more that the film went to some bullshit MGM+ or whatever crap that I DON’T pay for monthly.
As I said, the story here is about Monk – an author of previously published (but don’t really sell) smarty smarts who has been receiving rejection after rejection from publishing houses for his newest novel. After seeing the praise and glory, hundreds of thousands of books sold, million dollar movie rights and a knockoff “Oprah’s Book Club” singing the praises of a new release entitled We's Lives in Da Ghetto Monk takes to the keyboard and pens his own “true plight” *cough satire cough* of the “Authentic Black Experience” under a pen name – only to receive even MORE praise than the aforementioned “Ghetto” (including a National Book Award nomination – for which he is on the judging panel). Then you add in a “maybe you can go home again” subplot featuring a brother, sister, aging mother and a box full of dearly departed dad’s secrets and you have nearly a home run of a novel.
And talk about life imitating art. Erasure originally was released over 20 years ago, got nominated for the Pulitzer and yet most people probably never even heard of it until it was finally made into a film. If you haven’t taken time to read Everett yet, you are truly missing out and should add him to your TBR post haste.
4.5 Stars
April 12, 2024
This was a brilliant, funny, idiosyncratic novel which combines the realistic and the metafictional in the mind and work of a literature professor Thelonius Ellison. Ellison, known as 'Monk'-- a prickly academic who thinks about texts and semiotics in almost mathematical terms, and writes abstruse, difficult novels which have been selling less and less well-- is embroiled in academic feuds about issues made purposely arcane and, to the outsider's view, as funny/vicious Nabokovian examples of academic infighting. And Monk is enraged by a bestselling novel written by a Black academic, 'We Lives in Da Ghetto'--which sold for $3 million. Everywhere he goes, it's being reviewed and revered.
When the care of his demented mother falls onto his shoulders, this ultimate academic decides to write a parody of 'We Lives in Da Ghetto'--with unforeseen consequences.
This novel within the novel is a true horror--but so was Monk's academic paper, a parody in itself. Meta within meta. Meanwhile, as Monk erases himself and his passion for exactitude and in his insincere writing in this purposefully-awful novel, we also have the story of his mother's erasure through dementia, his family's erasure through personality and misadventure, and other levels of the theme. Funny and angry and deadly serious all at the same time. Overtones of Ralph Ellison and the Invisible Man weave through this. And it really punches out at the end. Definitely more Percival Everett on the menu. Next, his short story collection "Half an Inch of Water"--stories of the contemporary west.
When the care of his demented mother falls onto his shoulders, this ultimate academic decides to write a parody of 'We Lives in Da Ghetto'--with unforeseen consequences.
This novel within the novel is a true horror--but so was Monk's academic paper, a parody in itself. Meta within meta. Meanwhile, as Monk erases himself and his passion for exactitude and in his insincere writing in this purposefully-awful novel, we also have the story of his mother's erasure through dementia, his family's erasure through personality and misadventure, and other levels of the theme. Funny and angry and deadly serious all at the same time. Overtones of Ralph Ellison and the Invisible Man weave through this. And it really punches out at the end. Definitely more Percival Everett on the menu. Next, his short story collection "Half an Inch of Water"--stories of the contemporary west.
Read
May 9, 2023Genuinely amazing and genuinely shocking. This is a sort of family drama--a writer/academic coping with his mother's dementia, a family tragedy, a brother having a breakdown, his own lack of personal life and his stormy professional situation, which includes not being able to find a publisher for his latest super-intellectual and clearly unreadable novel. All of this is beautifully done. Thing is, the MC, Monk (his name is Thelonius, no wonder he has issues) is a Black American. He doesn't want to be defined by the construct of 'race' (his issues are, frankly, the issues of many a non-Black protagonist in many a novel about family and failing novelists), but society and the publishing industry think differently. They don't want his experimental novels about Sophocles, but if he wrote about "the Black experience", like a truly terrible and exploitative bestseller he sees...
So he does. He writes an absolutely excruciating novel about a thuggish criminal teen full of misogyny, homophobia, racism, rape, poverty porn, violence and horribly overdone dialect. This entire thing is reproduced over about 50% of the book and it's one of the most painful things I've ever read. He publishes it posing as an ex-prisoner. Naturally, Random House give him a huge advance, there's a movie deal, and he's nominated for a prestigious literary award, with assorted well-meaning white idiots cooing about the authenticity of the teenage street Black experience as made up by an upper middle class academic with a beach house. And things start to fall apart for Monk as he has to pose as the fake author, as his identity splits off, as he watches his mother forget herself, and he realises that success, and thus the money to keep his mother in full time care, depend on him performing race in a societally approved way that constitutes a total betrayal of his art and principles and dignity. (Notably, the bestseller that sparks it off was also written by an upper middle class author who once spent a weekend in Harlem. Exploitation works along a lot of axes in this book.)
Remarkable and hard-hitting, with vicious satirical bite but also deep heart about family. The parallel plots of Monk's mother being erased by Alzheimers, and the rewriting of family memories by the revelation of old secrets, work really well with Monk writing lies, creating a new persona, losing himself and the things that matter, having an identity imposed on him as per the opinions of mostly white liberal US media. A hugely thought-provoking read.
So he does. He writes an absolutely excruciating novel about a thuggish criminal teen full of misogyny, homophobia, racism, rape, poverty porn, violence and horribly overdone dialect. This entire thing is reproduced over about 50% of the book and it's one of the most painful things I've ever read. He publishes it posing as an ex-prisoner. Naturally, Random House give him a huge advance, there's a movie deal, and he's nominated for a prestigious literary award, with assorted well-meaning white idiots cooing about the authenticity of the teenage street Black experience as made up by an upper middle class academic with a beach house. And things start to fall apart for Monk as he has to pose as the fake author, as his identity splits off, as he watches his mother forget herself, and he realises that success, and thus the money to keep his mother in full time care, depend on him performing race in a societally approved way that constitutes a total betrayal of his art and principles and dignity. (Notably, the bestseller that sparks it off was also written by an upper middle class author who once spent a weekend in Harlem. Exploitation works along a lot of axes in this book.)
Remarkable and hard-hitting, with vicious satirical bite but also deep heart about family. The parallel plots of Monk's mother being erased by Alzheimers, and the rewriting of family memories by the revelation of old secrets, work really well with Monk writing lies, creating a new persona, losing himself and the things that matter, having an identity imposed on him as per the opinions of mostly white liberal US media. A hugely thought-provoking read.
April 3, 2024
4.5 Stars!
I had never heard of this book before the adaption American Fiction was nominated for Oscars. Which is apt given what the plot of this book is about. Erasure is about a Black struggling writer. He writes boring literary novels and his latest novel has been turned down by 17 publishers. He's a good writer but he's often told that his books aren't "Black enough". His anger only grows once he watches another Black author become the toast of the literary world with her book We's Lives in Da Ghetto. Fed up he decides to write an ignorant Black book under a fake name. But to his shock and horror that book makes him a publishing superstar.
This book came out in 2001 and was nominated for a Pulitzer but I like I believe most people had never heard of it. It's been a good long while since I've read Literary Satire and this book made me miss and crave more of it. This book isn't for everyone. If you don't read alot of Literary fiction this book probably isn't a good one to start with. I love this man's writing and I've already ordered his latest novel James.
A Great Read!
I had never heard of this book before the adaption American Fiction was nominated for Oscars. Which is apt given what the plot of this book is about. Erasure is about a Black struggling writer. He writes boring literary novels and his latest novel has been turned down by 17 publishers. He's a good writer but he's often told that his books aren't "Black enough". His anger only grows once he watches another Black author become the toast of the literary world with her book We's Lives in Da Ghetto. Fed up he decides to write an ignorant Black book under a fake name. But to his shock and horror that book makes him a publishing superstar.
This book came out in 2001 and was nominated for a Pulitzer but I like I believe most people had never heard of it. It's been a good long while since I've read Literary Satire and this book made me miss and crave more of it. This book isn't for everyone. If you don't read alot of Literary fiction this book probably isn't a good one to start with. I love this man's writing and I've already ordered his latest novel James.
A Great Read!
March 24, 2012
If Erasure is about anything, it’s about identity. Ones we invent for ourselves, ones we invent for others, ones that are forced on us, and ones that we lose. From the first page, the novel’s protagonist, Thelonius “Monk” Ellison, tries to establish his:
There are two foci to the book. The first is the satirization of the publishing industry; the second is Monk’s relationship with his family.
Monk’s books languish unread because publishers and bookstores don’t know how to market him. A publisher complains in a rejection letter that he “shows a brilliant intellect, certainly. It’s challenging and masterfully written and constructed, but who wants to read this shit? It’s too difficult for the market. But more, who is he writing to? Does the guy live in a cave somewhere? Come on, a novel in which Aristophanes and Euripides kill a younger, more talented dramatist, then contemplate the death of metaphysics?” And a reviewer moans that “one is lost to understand what this reworking of Aeschylus’ The Persians has to do with the African American experience.”
When the “authentic,” African American novel, We’s Lives In Da Ghetto by Juanita Mae Jenkins (whose experience of inner-city life extends to a few days spent in Harlem) rises to the top of the best-seller list, and the author receives accolades and lucrative publishing/movie deals, Monk writes a scathing parody titled My Pafology (subsequently renamed Fuck! under the nom de plume Stagg R. Leigh. It’s the story of Van Go Jenkins, tough-talking, 19-year-old father of four babies by four different mothers. A typical resident of “da hood.” He convinces his agent to shop the book around, and Random House picks it up for $600,000. Of course, Hollywood becomes interested in making a movie based on it. And to add grievous insult to near fatal injury, it’s named the best book of the year by the awards committee he’s sitting on despite his attempt to derail the nomination:
The second focus of the novel – Monk’s personal life – receives less attention than the first, which is unfortunate because it’s potentially more interesting than the first and could have been more extensively mined. There’s Monk’s mother, whose identity is rapidly being lost to Alzheimer’s; there’s Bill, his older brother, who has come out after being divorced by his wife; there’s Lisa, his older sister, a doctor at a woman’s clinic who’s been murdered by an anti-choice fanatic. And there’s his deceased father, whose heretofore unknown love affair with a British nurse he met in Korea suggests a private life and identity that his son completely missed. And there’s Monk’s own struggle to be honest with himself and respond to the demands society and the expectations that people in his life have of him.
For the most part, I enjoyed Erasure. There were times when the satire became heavy handed and distracting, but not to such an extent that I wouldn’t recommend this book strongly.
I have dark brown skin, curly hair, a broad nose, some of my ancestors were slaves and I have been detained by pasty white policemen in New Hampshire, Arizona and Georgia and so the society in which I live tells me I am black; that is my race. Though I am fairly athletic, I am no good at basketball. I listen to Mahler, Aretha Franklin, Charlie Parker and Ry Cooder on vinyl records and compact discs. I graduate summa cum laude from Harvard, hating every minute of it. I am good at math. I cannot dance. I did not grow up in any inner city or the rural south. My family owned a bungalow near Annapolis. My grandfather was a doctor. My father was a doctor. My brother and sister were doctors.
While in college I was a member of the Black Panther Party, defunct as it was, mainly because I felt I had to prove I was black enough. Some people in the society in which I live, described as being black, tell me I am not black enough. Some people whom the society calls white tell me the same thing….
The hard, gritty truth of the matter is that I hardly ever think about race. Those times when I did think about it a lot I did so because of my guilt for not thinking about it. I don’t believe in race. I believe there are people who will shoot me or hang me or cheat me and try to stop me because they do believe in race, because of my brown skin, curly hair, wide nose and slave ancestors. But that’s just the way it is. (pp. 1-2)
There are two foci to the book. The first is the satirization of the publishing industry; the second is Monk’s relationship with his family.
Monk’s books languish unread because publishers and bookstores don’t know how to market him. A publisher complains in a rejection letter that he “shows a brilliant intellect, certainly. It’s challenging and masterfully written and constructed, but who wants to read this shit? It’s too difficult for the market. But more, who is he writing to? Does the guy live in a cave somewhere? Come on, a novel in which Aristophanes and Euripides kill a younger, more talented dramatist, then contemplate the death of metaphysics?” And a reviewer moans that “one is lost to understand what this reworking of Aeschylus’ The Persians has to do with the African American experience.”
When the “authentic,” African American novel, We’s Lives In Da Ghetto by Juanita Mae Jenkins (whose experience of inner-city life extends to a few days spent in Harlem) rises to the top of the best-seller list, and the author receives accolades and lucrative publishing/movie deals, Monk writes a scathing parody titled My Pafology (subsequently renamed Fuck! under the nom de plume Stagg R. Leigh. It’s the story of Van Go Jenkins, tough-talking, 19-year-old father of four babies by four different mothers. A typical resident of “da hood.” He convinces his agent to shop the book around, and Random House picks it up for $600,000. Of course, Hollywood becomes interested in making a movie based on it. And to add grievous insult to near fatal injury, it’s named the best book of the year by the awards committee he’s sitting on despite his attempt to derail the nomination:
“It’s not that it’s a bad novel…. It’s no novel at all. It is a failed conception, an unformed fetus, seed cast into the sand, a hand without fingers, a word with no vowels. It is offensive, poorly written, racist and mindless.”
Wilson Harnet, Ailene Hoover, Thomas Tomad and Jon Paul Sigmarsen just looked at me, none of them speaking.
“It’s not art,” I said.
Ailene Hoover said, “I should think as an African American you’d be happy to see one of your own people get an award like this.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said, “Are you nuts?”
… “I would think you’d be happy to have the story of your people so vividly portrayed,” Hoover said.
“These are no more my people than Abbot and Costello are your people,” I said….
“I learned a lot reading that book,” Jon Paul Sigmarsen said. “I haven’t had a lot of experience with color – black people – and so Fuck was a great thing for me.”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” I said. “People will read this shit and believe that there is truth to it.”
Thomas Tomad laughed. “This is the truest novel I’ve ever read. It could only have been written by someone who has done hard time. It’s the real thing.” (p. 261)
The second focus of the novel – Monk’s personal life – receives less attention than the first, which is unfortunate because it’s potentially more interesting than the first and could have been more extensively mined. There’s Monk’s mother, whose identity is rapidly being lost to Alzheimer’s; there’s Bill, his older brother, who has come out after being divorced by his wife; there’s Lisa, his older sister, a doctor at a woman’s clinic who’s been murdered by an anti-choice fanatic. And there’s his deceased father, whose heretofore unknown love affair with a British nurse he met in Korea suggests a private life and identity that his son completely missed. And there’s Monk’s own struggle to be honest with himself and respond to the demands society and the expectations that people in his life have of him.
For the most part, I enjoyed Erasure. There were times when the satire became heavy handed and distracting, but not to such an extent that I wouldn’t recommend this book strongly.
March 11, 2024
This is a supremely smart novel. In fact, it was often so smart that some of the subtlety and literary allusion went over my head. That’s not to say that it detracted from the main thrust of the novel which muddles up some rib splitting jokes with profound sadness and despair.
Everett has impressed me twice in a row! You best believe I have the rest of his stuff ready to rock and roll!
March 10th Update: my wife and I both watched American Fiction last night. I thought it was a great adaptation and my wife (who hasn’t read the book) loved it too!
Everett has impressed me twice in a row! You best believe I have the rest of his stuff ready to rock and roll!
March 10th Update: my wife and I both watched American Fiction last night. I thought it was a great adaptation and my wife (who hasn’t read the book) loved it too!
May 8, 2022
This being the second book by Everett I've read, its quite a different breed from Telephone
We first meet the main character, Thelonious Ellison, aka Monk, a black English professor and author. Since Everett's vocations are identical, I wondered if it was based on fact. Monk's narrative style is articulate and mainstream and as a result, he's respected in educational and literary circles. Monk is close with his elderly mother who refers to him as "Monksie", as well as his sister Lisa, an abortion clinic doctor, but distant with his brother due to sexual identity issues. Faced with years of disinterest in his latest manuscript, emotional turmoil erupts when he learns his sister was killed by abortion protestors. Since she lived close to his mother who's suffering with dementia, he's left with no other choice than to move closer.
Taking a sabbatical from teaching while exploring ways to help Mom, his frustration mounts when a debut novel by a black female becomes a best seller. Like a ticking time bomb, Monk nears the edge of the emotional cliff where an epiphany suddenly surfaces. Emulating the best selling author, he creates a new pen name and writes a manuscript in ghetto speak. Raw, angry and violent, it tells the story of a former convict as he resurfaces from prison. When his agent reads it, he thinks its a joke, but Monk demands he find a publisher. What transpires is far from expected.
Part farce, part realistic, this is one of the more unique stories I've read, but comes as little surprise given Percy's talent. Truth be told, I waffled while reading due to what I felt was overuse of flashbacks but in the end, I decided it was brilliant due to unexpected dark humor.
For those unfamiliar with this author who appreciate character, plot and style, I urge you to dip your toe into his writing which in my opinion ranks with the best. As an English professor at USC and creative mind, its clear he not only understand what great storytelling is about, but demonstrates it in every book he writes. Better yet, for those of you who enjoy mysteries, he's written quite a few though I'll be focused on his others.
We first meet the main character, Thelonious Ellison, aka Monk, a black English professor and author. Since Everett's vocations are identical, I wondered if it was based on fact. Monk's narrative style is articulate and mainstream and as a result, he's respected in educational and literary circles. Monk is close with his elderly mother who refers to him as "Monksie", as well as his sister Lisa, an abortion clinic doctor, but distant with his brother due to sexual identity issues. Faced with years of disinterest in his latest manuscript, emotional turmoil erupts when he learns his sister was killed by abortion protestors. Since she lived close to his mother who's suffering with dementia, he's left with no other choice than to move closer.
Taking a sabbatical from teaching while exploring ways to help Mom, his frustration mounts when a debut novel by a black female becomes a best seller. Like a ticking time bomb, Monk nears the edge of the emotional cliff where an epiphany suddenly surfaces. Emulating the best selling author, he creates a new pen name and writes a manuscript in ghetto speak. Raw, angry and violent, it tells the story of a former convict as he resurfaces from prison. When his agent reads it, he thinks its a joke, but Monk demands he find a publisher. What transpires is far from expected.
Part farce, part realistic, this is one of the more unique stories I've read, but comes as little surprise given Percy's talent. Truth be told, I waffled while reading due to what I felt was overuse of flashbacks but in the end, I decided it was brilliant due to unexpected dark humor.
For those unfamiliar with this author who appreciate character, plot and style, I urge you to dip your toe into his writing which in my opinion ranks with the best. As an English professor at USC and creative mind, its clear he not only understand what great storytelling is about, but demonstrates it in every book he writes. Better yet, for those of you who enjoy mysteries, he's written quite a few though I'll be focused on his others.
May 20, 2024
4.5
Thelonious Ellison is a professor and novelist. His novels are too intellectual, too high-brow, to the point of being incomprehensible. When his latest novel is being rejected on account of making no sense, he's despondent, seeing what type of novel is at the top of the best sellers list only lowers his spirit. To make things worse, his family is going through a series of crises and a tragedy.
Pissed off, Thelonious takes to writing in the style of a ghetto thug. He's having so much fun with it. His unamused agent will submit it, under a pseudonym. Surprises follow!
This novel is a brilliant satire about the literary and publishing world, about race and the limitations and expectations associated with one's skin colour, which make Thelonious feel like he does not fit in anywhere.
This is the fourth Everett novel that I read in the past two years. I'm in awe of his intelligence and how he twists language to make a point or several in just the right number of pages. So often, I found myself guffawing.
As I said in a previous update, Sean Crisden's delivery is worthy of an award or several.
Before reading this, my husband and I watched American Fiction, which we appreciated for the most part, but were puzzled by its ending.
I wonder if Everett was OK with it, as the movie's ending was over the top and different to his novel.
Thelonious Ellison is a professor and novelist. His novels are too intellectual, too high-brow, to the point of being incomprehensible. When his latest novel is being rejected on account of making no sense, he's despondent, seeing what type of novel is at the top of the best sellers list only lowers his spirit. To make things worse, his family is going through a series of crises and a tragedy.
Pissed off, Thelonious takes to writing in the style of a ghetto thug. He's having so much fun with it. His unamused agent will submit it, under a pseudonym. Surprises follow!
This novel is a brilliant satire about the literary and publishing world, about race and the limitations and expectations associated with one's skin colour, which make Thelonious feel like he does not fit in anywhere.
This is the fourth Everett novel that I read in the past two years. I'm in awe of his intelligence and how he twists language to make a point or several in just the right number of pages. So often, I found myself guffawing.
As I said in a previous update, Sean Crisden's delivery is worthy of an award or several.
Before reading this, my husband and I watched American Fiction, which we appreciated for the most part, but were puzzled by its ending.
I wonder if Everett was OK with it, as the movie's ending was over the top and different to his novel.
February 23, 2024
This is the story of a black author, artist and intellectual who is greatly respected in small circles, yet has not (and does not seek) fame for his talents. On a lark he writes a ridiculously over-the-top racist “pop” novel of massively stereotyped “ghetto” and submits it anonymously. To his great chagrin it becomes a best seller and he becomes wealthy overnight. The story weaves his youth as a black man in America with his professional family in a most skilful and interesting way. The struggles of a gay black brother, an aloof father that shows him unabashed favoritism and a mother who is approaching dementia are contrasted against the protagonists own self recrimination and doubt. The ending is dazzling, the writing is superb and lively. The story is, quite frankly, exceptional.
This author has remarkable intellect and skill, I’m certain it is an autobiographical fantasy. It is clever in ways that are hard to imagine, showing remarkable creativity, yet not confusing like other experimental novels. It seems a true rendering of what it truly means to be an authentic black man in America, not the clique that is so prevalent in public discourse. I have to give it 5 stars, it is that good. There are snippets of literature, art, experimental poetry woven in. I didn’t even understand much of this, but I loved it (think Vonnegut). The “novel” within this novel is rendered completely, like the one in Irving’s The World According to Garp.
Check it out, you won’t be disappointed.
This author has remarkable intellect and skill, I’m certain it is an autobiographical fantasy. It is clever in ways that are hard to imagine, showing remarkable creativity, yet not confusing like other experimental novels. It seems a true rendering of what it truly means to be an authentic black man in America, not the clique that is so prevalent in public discourse. I have to give it 5 stars, it is that good. There are snippets of literature, art, experimental poetry woven in. I didn’t even understand much of this, but I loved it (think Vonnegut). The “novel” within this novel is rendered completely, like the one in Irving’s The World According to Garp.
Check it out, you won’t be disappointed.
December 24, 2023
Funny, cutting, true - what more do you want?
A film, American Fiction, Based on this novel has just been released. It's gotten very good reviews, but I think I'll reread the book at some point, rather than seeing the film.
A film, American Fiction, Based on this novel has just been released. It's gotten very good reviews, but I think I'll reread the book at some point, rather than seeing the film.
December 18, 2023
"Look at the shit that's being published. I'm sick of it. This is an expression of my being sick of it."
3.5 stars — These sentiments are shared by Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, the first-person narrator throughout this experimental novel, but they might as well be an all-caps preface from the author himself.
Monk is an African-American academic and struggling author whose agent tells him his books won’t sell because they're not "black enough."
Disgusted and dismayed by the popularity of a new best-selling novel called We's Lives in Da Ghetto that focuses on urban poverty and perpetuates degrading racial stereotypes - what the publishing industry and public at large are praising as “authentically Black" - Monk sits down to write a parody novel (shared in its entirety here) that he later submits to his agent under a pseudonym, confident it will be ridiculed and dismissed as outrageously offensive, or at the very least appreciated as the parody he intended.
If you've seen the recent trailer for American Fiction, the new film adaptation starring Jeffrey Wright, Issa Rae, and Tracee Ellis Ross, and garnering lots of early awards season buzz, then you already know that Monk's rage-fueled parody doesn't exactly get the kind of reaction he'd hoped for....
This bitterly funny satire of the publishing industry and the restrictive cultural definitions of "Blackness" to which it often conforms and caters, gets awkwardly and inconsistently folded into a sentimental family drama about Monk caring for an aging mother afflicted with Alzheimer's, and coming to terms with his father's death by suicide a decade earlier. There's an honesty and poignancy to these sections that I loved, but the tonal clash with the more acidic social satire made it hard for me to get fully in sync with either narrative track.
Tossed into this already messy mix are Monk's dense and esoteric notes that include personal letters, philosophical inquiries, ideas for new stories, academic papers, and even imagined conversations between historical figures. Maybe I've been away from academia for too long, or maybe this was just a case of right book/wrong time, but much of this went over my head and caused my eyes to glaze over with boredom.
Ultimately, it's one of those novels I admired a lot more than I loved. The overall concept is clever and compelling, but the satire never really pushes beyond where you expect it to go. And while lucidly and sensitively written, the passages about growing old and caring for a parent with Alzheimer's felt more like an abstract intellectual exercise, a stark contrast with Monk's parody of what people expect "Black” art to be, rather than an emotionally satisfying standalone story.
This was published in 2001, so the targets for satire here also feel somewhat dated and in some cases even obsolete, as we seem to be witnessing an emerging Golden Age for diverse representations of the Black experience in literature, television, and film. A welcome and long overdue relief, to be sure, but makes this a slightly less compelling read than it probably would’ve been two decades ago.
Curious to see how the film adapts and (hopefully) updates this provocative source material.
3.5 stars — These sentiments are shared by Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, the first-person narrator throughout this experimental novel, but they might as well be an all-caps preface from the author himself.
Monk is an African-American academic and struggling author whose agent tells him his books won’t sell because they're not "black enough."
Disgusted and dismayed by the popularity of a new best-selling novel called We's Lives in Da Ghetto that focuses on urban poverty and perpetuates degrading racial stereotypes - what the publishing industry and public at large are praising as “authentically Black" - Monk sits down to write a parody novel (shared in its entirety here) that he later submits to his agent under a pseudonym, confident it will be ridiculed and dismissed as outrageously offensive, or at the very least appreciated as the parody he intended.
If you've seen the recent trailer for American Fiction, the new film adaptation starring Jeffrey Wright, Issa Rae, and Tracee Ellis Ross, and garnering lots of early awards season buzz, then you already know that Monk's rage-fueled parody doesn't exactly get the kind of reaction he'd hoped for....
This bitterly funny satire of the publishing industry and the restrictive cultural definitions of "Blackness" to which it often conforms and caters, gets awkwardly and inconsistently folded into a sentimental family drama about Monk caring for an aging mother afflicted with Alzheimer's, and coming to terms with his father's death by suicide a decade earlier. There's an honesty and poignancy to these sections that I loved, but the tonal clash with the more acidic social satire made it hard for me to get fully in sync with either narrative track.
Tossed into this already messy mix are Monk's dense and esoteric notes that include personal letters, philosophical inquiries, ideas for new stories, academic papers, and even imagined conversations between historical figures. Maybe I've been away from academia for too long, or maybe this was just a case of right book/wrong time, but much of this went over my head and caused my eyes to glaze over with boredom.
Ultimately, it's one of those novels I admired a lot more than I loved. The overall concept is clever and compelling, but the satire never really pushes beyond where you expect it to go. And while lucidly and sensitively written, the passages about growing old and caring for a parent with Alzheimer's felt more like an abstract intellectual exercise, a stark contrast with Monk's parody of what people expect "Black” art to be, rather than an emotionally satisfying standalone story.
This was published in 2001, so the targets for satire here also feel somewhat dated and in some cases even obsolete, as we seem to be witnessing an emerging Golden Age for diverse representations of the Black experience in literature, television, and film. A welcome and long overdue relief, to be sure, but makes this a slightly less compelling read than it probably would’ve been two decades ago.
Curious to see how the film adapts and (hopefully) updates this provocative source material.
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