A joyous, clever, black satire references the entire African-American experience to make its point
If profane stand-up comedy married a nerdy send-up on racism, The Sellout would be their yowling baby. Paul Beatty바카라s flamboyant farce is bursting with cusswords, pratfalls, political asides, psychotherapy, pop culture riffs and lessons in race history. His tough-talking, humbug-skewering African-American protagonist likes his marijuana strong and his humour black.
Beatty, who started out as the Grand Poetry Slam Champion on MTV in the 바카라90s, is not the only writer of black satire out there바카라he would be the first to admit it, he edited Hokum: An Anthology of African-American Humor, after all. But his time has come. He won the National Book Critics바카라 Circle award and became the first American to win the Booker for The Sellout. It바카라s hard to believe that he wrote it, because he was 바카라broke바카라 and then was rejected 18 times till Oneworld took it on. Maybe Hominy Jenkins, his old slave character here, is on to something when he says, 바카라You know, massa, Bugs Bunny wasn바카라t nothing but Br바카라er Rabbit with a better agent바카라.
The Sellout is a subversive yarn about a Black farmer reinstituting slavery and apartheid after the imaginary ghetto of Dickens, California, suddenly goes missing from all maps. 바카라If New York is the City That Never Sleeps, then Los Angeles is the City That바카라s Always Passed Out on the Couch.바카라 But, to understand what a terrible shithole Dickens is, we need to know that even condemned places don바카라t want to have anything to do with it.
바카라Juarez (aka the City That Never Stops Bleeding) feels that Dickens is too violent. Chernobyl...questioned the attitudes of a citizenry so laissez-faire about such rampant pollution바카라.
바카라Don바카라t tell me Kinshasa, the poorest city in the poorest country in the world, a place where the average per capita income is one goat bell, two bootleg Michael Jackson cassette tapes, and three sips of potable water per year, thinks we바카라re too poor to associate with.바카라
바카라No, they think Dickens is too Black.바카라
It takes a special kind of lunacy to pull off this tall tale, but as deep enquiries into the prickly subject of race relations go, this is as real as it gets. Beatty reinforces offensive stereotypes only to explode them. We are too busy laughing out loud to see this right away. We come away both disarmed and deeply uneasy.
That jeux d바카라esprit runs through the nameless narrator바카라s surreal childhood scenes with his mad social scientist father. 바카라I, his gangly absent-minded black lab rat, was homeschooled in strict accordance with Piaget바카라s theory of cognitive development. I wasn바카라t fed; I was presented with lukewarm appetitive stimuli. I wasn바카라t punished, but broken of my unconditioned reflexes. I wasn바카라t loved, but brought up in an atmosphere of calculated intimacy and intense levels of commitment.바카라 He asks cheeky questions and gets 바카라a vicious beating that would바카라ve made Kunta Kinte wince바카라.
After the protagonists바카라s father바카라s death, the phony scholar Foy Cheshire runs the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals to the ground. There is absurdist hyperbole. Foy earnestly renames 바카라Middlemarch바카라 for Black students 바카라Middlemarch Middle of April, I바카라ll Have Your Money바카라I Swear바카라. He introduces new Black-friendly fonts like Harlem Renaissance, calls new software EmpowerPoint, and titles his literature syllabus 바카라Fire the Canon!바카라 He unfairly accuses the narrator of being 바카라a sellout바카라 (a Black taking on white attitudes) as he sits eating바카라wait for it바카라Oreos.
As if this racially loaded cliche isn바카라t enough, our man sells watermelons and weed. He peddles top-quality strains with names like Carpal Tunnel, Anglophobia and Perspicacity바카라the last one makes a user suddenly understand her Eng lit seminar and how the stock market works바카라바카라Well, that바카라s how good this shit is, I know what 바카라perspicacity바카라, a word I바카라ve never heard, means.바카라
He takes on as his willing slave his 바카라first nigger whisperee바카라, the masochistic faded child actor Hominy Jenkins. With his wide Polident smile and eyeballs bulging with fear and hyperthyroidism, Hominy is the butt of delicious jokes. I say butt advisedly바카라he is frequently pantless.
It is up to our anti-hero to reintroduce segregation, slavery and road-signs to bring Dickens back into official existence. In the process, he winds up on trial in the Supreme Court. Will he walk free?
Beatty바카라s earlier novels, Tuff, White Boy Shuffle, and Slumberland, explored what it meant to be young, Black, male, and American. The Sellout elegantly plumbs Black identity and responsibility via personal and national dystopia. The discrimination debate rages on in America today. Bigotry is the new normal. Beatty tilts his funhouse mirror to amplify jaw-dropping colour biases until we are forced to look deep within ourselves and face our darkest secret.