Seven ways GR might have influenced THE SELLOUT, but, says the author, didn't

[Mark Kohut]

I had an exchange with the Books Editor of The Guardian, a Ms. Claire
Armistead, when she asked  for possible new questions to ask Paul Beatty as
she had an interview coming up. I suggested asking about Pynchon's possible
influence, esp GR, and sent her the shortlist below.

She did ask him and he said he has never read him but also wrote "but he
wears his reading lightly so can't be sure".

I joked that it was almost Jungian (a name Beatty's narrator throws off
almost wistfully a couple--three times ) and shows the depth of the
"collective consciousness" of great "savage satirists" maybe.

BTW, Beatty doesn't like his novel called "comic' or satiric he said in
another interview because it keeps one from dealing with the serious
themes. I'm at noticeable fault but I like this guy's vision.......


Seven ways of No Influence:
Lists: The riffs, the surprising, obliquely apt lists of comparisons he
applies to various surreal situations.

Baroque outrageousness.

Slothrop's conditioning in Gravity's Rainbow. And the narrator's

The Shit, Money and The Word as it is labelled in GR. "My bowels evacuated
me". And his name is Me.

Charisma is a character also in Pynchon.

the trope of a 'lost community'--nowhere on a map.

and most deeply, perhaps, the pervasive power and dominance--from the basic
plot to other relationships....ala Gravity's Rainbow esp.
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