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

[Mark Kohut]

This is a PS repeating something I think I once posted.

Since such 'vicious' satire, as the phrase goes, can always remind one of
Pynchon as a Giant at that, and particularly
in one scene which I cannot remember granularly, I wondered if Beatty read
and was influenced by Tom P.

A book interviewer for The Guardian asked online for any questions he
should ask Paul when he got to talk to him.
I asked him to ask about Pynchon and influence.

He said No, he'd not read him......but then there's always that advice to
trust the tale not the teller....Ron Charles
at the Post when he talked to him thought he was interestingly a bit
oblique about influences....

The Other Mark

On Sun, Jun 30, 2019 at 9:19 AM Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
> >>
> >> <
> http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail&utm_term=oa-4885-a
> >
> >> Virus-free. www.avg.com
> >> <
> http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail&utm_term=oa-4885-a
> >
> >> <#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>
> >>
> >>> 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
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>