Not P, but P-List turned me on to The Sellout, so here's my review!

[Keith Davis]

Mark,

 I’m going to tentatively agree, and pay attention to that on my next read. I think any writing that really appeals to me has a musical flow, Pynchon included. Recently, I’ve found that with Emily Barton and  Ursula LeGuin. Now, Tolstoy!

Best!
kd

Www.keithdavismusic.com

> On Jun 30, 2019, at 6:36 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Just purchased it on your recommendations, Mark and Keith. For the
> princely sum of eight Canadian dollars (or the local Australian
> equivalent of nine). I think I've won capitalism.
> 
>> On Sun, Jun 30, 2019 at 1:38 PM Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Thanks, Keith.
>> 
>> I know Beatty makes a joke about white critics describing everything
>> of value in Black culture being "like jazz", but with this novel of
>> his, I feel it's a cliche that holds true. I mean, it's certainly more
>> than just riffing, improv, and the occasional reversion to the
>> fundamental theme. But The Sellout's musicality is definitely in play.
>> Which I imagine holds a special appeal for you, in particular.
>> 
>> Yours,
>> Jerky
>> 
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>> 
>>> On Sat, Jun 29, 2019 at 11:18 PM Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Mark,
>>> 
>>> Thank you. Great review. I loved this book, too, and because of the things you’ve had to say about, I’m going to read it again, after I finish War and Peace, which I’m reading for the first time, and which is completely amazing.
>>> 
>>> All the best,
>>> Keith
>>> 
>>> Www.keithdavismusic.com
>>> 
>>>> On Jun 29, 2019, at 11:02 PM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Thanks to Mark K and all the talk about this book on the P-List, which
>>>> convinced me to buy this book a couple years ago. I finally read it
>>>> last week, and WOW.
>>>> 
>>>> Anyway, here it is...
>>>> 
>>>> My review of THE SELLOUT
>>>> A Novel by Paul Beatty
>>>> 
>>>> I finally finished Paul Beatty’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel, The
>>>> Sellout, about which I’ve previously stated my belief that it’s even
>>>> better than the hype campaign behind it has declared. Fortunately,
>>>> that pretty much holds through all the way to the beautifully (and
>>>> necessarily) understated denouement and conclusion.
>>>> 
>>>> So, what’s it all about, then? Well, it’s about a lot of things.
>>>> Story-wise, it’s about a fellow named “Bonbon” Me, the novel’s
>>>> protagonist, and his attempts to a) get his home town, a Los Angeles
>>>> “agrarian ghetto” named Dickens, put back on the map, and b)
>>>> reintroduce segregation and slavery in said neighborhood (with
>>>> shockingly counter-intuitive results).
>>>> 
>>>> But it’s also about so much more. It’s about the sense of community
>>>> and group consciousness and its loss in the swirl of Late Capitalist
>>>> atomization, which argues, Thatcher-like, that there’s no such thing,
>>>> and furthermore there never was. It’s about the rapidly fading memory
>>>> of the Black California experience of the last half of the 20th
>>>> century. It asks an incredibly difficult and dangerous question: is it
>>>> possible that being saddled with a somewhat negative identity is at
>>>> least better than being denied any sense of identity at all?
>>>> 
>>>> It’s also about the failures of traditional liberalism and the wanton,
>>>> contrary stupidity of Black conservatism. It’s about all the ways in
>>>> which fathers fail sons, men fail women, leaders fail their followers,
>>>> teachers fail their students… and vice versa. It’s about the
>>>> simultaneous, paradoxical impossibility-slash-need to forgive the
>>>> unforgivable sins of America’s unforgettable past. It’s about the
>>>> problem with history, about which Beatty writes: “we like to think
>>>> it’s a book – that we can turn the page and move the fuck on. But
>>>> history isn’t the paper it’s printed on. It’s memory, and memory is
>>>> time, emotions, and song. History is the things that stay with you.”
>>>> (P.115)
>>>> 
>>>> And yet, it’s also one of the funniest goddamn books I’ve ever had the
>>>> pleasure of reading, ranking somewhere alongside John Kennedy Tool’s
>>>> Confederacy of Dunces and Howard Stern’s Miss America as being among
>>>> the tiny handful of books that I had to stop reading because I was
>>>> laughing so hard, tears blurred my vision. This is thanks in large
>>>> part to the character of Bonbon’s elderly ward, Hominy Jenkins, former
>>>> child star and last surviving Little Rascal, whose lifetime of
>>>> starring in racist Our Gang cartoon shorts have warped his mind to the
>>>> point where he thinks he’s Bonbon’s slave. Together, the two form a
>>>> sort of urban Don Quixote and Sancho Panza (Bonbon even eschews
>>>> motorized vehicles for the most part, choosing to get around town on
>>>> his trusty horse).
>>>> 
>>>> Another great source of comedy is the “Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals”
>>>> club, led by Black conservative thinker, writer, and TV talk show host
>>>> Foy Cheshire, who took over the club after the death of his nemesis,
>>>> Bonbon’s father, who—prior to being gunned down by police a few years
>>>> previous—was both an experimental psychiatrist and the neighborhood
>>>> (forgive me) “nigger whisperer”, who was often called in by
>>>> authorities to talk suicidal Black people down from the ledge, or
>>>> handle hostage negotiations involving people of color, as some of the
>>>> more “woke” high-ranking officers realized they didn’t have the proper
>>>> life experience to commiserate with most of these particular cases.
>>>> 
>>>> And really, I’ve only begun to scratch the surface in terms of the
>>>> treasures this novel offers the reader. Every page of The Sellout
>>>> contains a dozen or more wry observations in the vein of mid-career
>>>> Richard Pryor; stuff like: “If you really think about it, the only
>>>> thing you absolutely never see in car commercials isn’t Jewish people,
>>>> homosexuals, or urban Negroes, its traffic.” (P.139) And then there’s
>>>> the extended sequence in which Bonbon applies to a service that finds
>>>> sister cities the way dating sites do for those looking to be matched
>>>> up with a significant other. Upon getting a call back, he finds out
>>>> that Dickens’ “three sister cities in order of compatibility… are
>>>> Juarez, Chernobyl, and Kinshasa.” (P.146)
>>>> 
>>>> The genius of Beatty’s novel feels cumulative, and I’m keenly aware
>>>> that tiny excerpts aren’t doing the work any justice at all. You’re
>>>> just going to have to take my word for it that The Sellout is destined
>>>> to go down as one of the great novels of the 21st century. Or don’t
>>>> take my word for it. Buy a copy and read it for yourself. Or hell,
>>>> even go to a library and borrow a copy, if you’re a cheapskate.
>>>> However you choose to take it in, I promise you won’t regret it.
>>>> --
>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l